THE ANIMAL LIFE OF THE GROUP. 493 



leathery marine animals with the mouth at one end of the body, which is 

 sometimes surrounded with tentacles which may be expanded or withdrawn. 

 They appear to bear but little resemblance to their cousins, the sea-urchins, or 

 their second cousins, the starfish, bi;t if one is closely examined it will be 

 found to resemble the sea i;rchins in certain fundamental features, especially 

 in possessing a ringed canal about the mouth which gives off tubes that run 

 up and backward to supply water to the tube-feet when they are present. 

 While they are far from being star shaped and are without the long, sharp 

 spines of the typical sea-urchins, they appear to trace their ancestry back to a 

 generalized starfish-like animal, and for that reason they are all included in 

 the one great phylum. -i 



An energetic collector may secure a half dozen species on a single exjte- 

 dition on the reef at low tide, but if one turns to Dr. Fisher's very compre- 

 hensive paper based on the Albatross collection, the list of Hawaiian species 

 will be found to be a much more extensive one. 



Of the forty-four species of sea-cucumbers enumerated by this careful nat- 

 uralist, nineteen are described for the first time. The fauna is placed in four 

 families, including twenty-one genera in all. Perhaps a dozen species are 

 liable to be gathered from the tide pools on the reef, but as they are difficult 

 to describe in popular terms, they are even more difficult to identify. A few 

 forms, however, may be recognized by their popular names or simple de- 

 scriptions. 



To all of these animals the Hawaiians applied the class name lull, but 

 several species were recognized by definite specific names, such as loli kai, 

 which grows about six inches long and is eaten raw or cooked ; loli pua, the 

 large black species often fifteen inches in length, which was also eaten, and loli 

 koko, which is red inside and was not eaten by the natives. 



The names thus applied by the Hawaiians are fairly accurate and con- 

 stant throughout the group. As the definite detection of the chai-acters which 

 separate the species in most cases can only be made out by the examination 

 of the calcareous deposits in the skin of the animal, their classification is a 

 far too difficult problem for the average collector. But to collect specimens of 

 many of the species is an easy task, since they are sluggish, inactive creatures 

 which lie buried in the sand or seek shelter underneath stones or in the 

 crevices in the coral reef. The large, dark-brown, blackish species with 

 ambulacral feet scattered all over the body,-- commonly found in lava rock pools, 

 is perhaps as well known as any of the group owing to its size when adult. 

 A reddish, heliotrope-purple or brownish-purple species -•'' frecpiently found 

 in company with the large black one just mentioned, and a brown or reddish- 

 brown species -^ of large size with a whitish ventral surface, are also common 

 in shallow water. A well-known species 2''' on the Honolulu reef is aboiit 

 three inches long and variously colored, the tentacles being straw color, the 



^'^ Echinodermatu. =^ nolotliuria ntrn. ^^ EoMlnnUi :-ineni.irens. -' nulntlinria rurinli inula. 



-^ Holothuria paydaUs. 



