INLAND FISHERIES. .V.) 



(Asterias vulg'aiis) is practically restricted to the lower portion of 

 tlie Bay, below Gould Island. Occasionally, of course, a speci- 

 men may be taken farther north. One specimen, for instance, was 

 taken near Dyer's Island, among a thousand or more of the com- 

 mon species. I have never known a single specimen among the 

 thousands of bushels of starfish captured on the 03"ster beds Avhich 

 are located in the upper half of the Ba3^ The common starfish, 

 on the other hand, occurs in greater or less abundance everywhere 

 from Fox Point to the mouth of the Bay, and is the only species 

 that commits depredations upon our oyster beds. (The purple 

 star would doul^tless be destructive if it were present.) The star- 

 fish taken from the vicinity of the oyster grounds are, moreover, 

 very similar to one another in appearance, as compared with those 

 which may be collected in one locality at Woods Holl. At this 

 station one haul of the mops may liring up stars which apparently 

 belong to half a dozen quite different varieties. 



There are other varieties difiering from those found on our oys- 

 ter beds, and from the ]3urple starfish, which seem to be cliarat;- 

 teristic of certain localities. Thus, at the head of Buzzards Bay, 

 at Ney's Neck, a large number of specimens of common star Avere 

 collected, which were very similar to one another, but quite differ- 

 ent from those found on our oyster grounds. They had very 

 large coarse spines, and were of a bronze color. The specimens 

 taken by the " Fish Hawk " in the waters south of Narragansett 

 Bay (see other part of this report, p. 35) seem to constitute a va- 

 riety (" maroon star"') which occupies this area to the exclusion 

 of other kinds of stars. 



It is not known certainly whether each of these so-called varie- 

 ties is an actual variety in the sense that the individuals breed 

 true, or whether the peculiar appearance is due merely to the fact 

 that the individual stars are bred and reared in a particular lo- 

 cality. 



If it should prove to be true that the young of a certain variety, 

 e. g., the maroon star, are always like the parent stars, no matter 

 where they grow, we might be able to determine to what extent 



