STAR-CHAMBER 



STARFISHES 



685 



were members of it. The resulting tribunal was, 

 daring the Tudor age, of undoubted utility as a 

 means of bringing to justice great and powerful 

 offenders who would otherwise have had it in their 

 power to set the law at defiance. It was inde- 

 pendent of a jury, and at that time juries were too 

 easily terrorised by the nobles. The civil juris- 

 diction of the Star-chamber comprised controversies 

 between English and foreign merchants, testa- 

 mentary causes, disputes between the heads and 

 commonalty of corporations, lay and ecclesiastical, 

 and claims to deodands. As a criminal court it 

 could inrlict any punishment short of death, and 

 had cognisance of forgery, perjury, riots, main- 

 tenance, fraud, libels, conspiracy, misconduct of 

 judges and others connected with the administra- 

 tion of the law, and all offences against the state, 

 in so far as they conld be brought under the de- 

 nomination of contempt of the king's authority. 

 Even treason, murder, and felony could be brought 

 under the jurisdiction of the Star-chamber, where 

 the king chose to remit the capital sentence. The 

 form of proceeding was by written information and 

 interrogatories, except when the accused person 

 confessed, in which case the information and pro- 

 ceedings were oral ; and out of this exception grew 

 one of the most flagrant abuses of this tribunal in 

 the later period of its history. Regardless of the 

 existing rule that the confession must be free and 

 unconstrained, pressure of every kind, including 

 torture, was used to procure acknowledgments of 

 guilt ; admissions of the most immaterial facts 

 were construed into confessions ; and fine, imprison- 

 ment, and mutilation inflicted on a mere oral pro- 

 ceeding, without hearing the accused, by a court 

 consisting of the immediate representatives of 

 prerogative. The proceedings of the Star-chamber 

 had always been viewed with distrust by the 

 commons ; but during the reign of Charles I. its 

 excesses reached a pitch that made it alisolutely 

 odious to the country at large; the punishments 

 inflicted on Alexander Leigliton, Prynne, Burton, 

 and Bast wick brought matters to a height, and in 

 HM1 a bill was carried in both Houses ( 16 Car. I. 

 chap. 10) which decreed the abolition of the 

 Star-chamber and the equally unpopular High Com- 

 mission Court (q.v.). See CHARLES I., LAUD. 



Starfishes (Asteroidea), a class of Echino- 

 derms, nearly allied to the Brittle-stars (Ophiur- 

 oidea), an account of which is included in this 

 article, and to the Sea-urchins (Echinoidea). 



The Common Five-rayed Starfish (Asterias or 

 AsteracaiMion rubens) may be taken as type. 

 It is sometimes seen in shore-pools about the 

 low-water level, but its haunts are on the floor 

 of the sea at depths of a few fathoms. It moves 

 sluggishly by means of suctorial tube-feet on the 

 under surface of each arm. It often feeds on 

 young oysters and other bivalves, but it may live 

 on much smaller booty. 



Haeckel compared such a starfish to a colony of 

 five worms, and the comparison is useful. Each 

 arm is anatomically complete in itself ; there is a 

 ventral nerve-cord ending in a terminal eye, and 

 united with the nerves of the other four arms in 

 a pentagon around the mouth ; there is a blood- 

 vessel above each radial nerve, and a vascular ring 

 above the nerve-pentagon ; there is a radial water- 

 vessel in each arm, connected internally with little 

 .eservoirs or ampullfe, externally with the suctorial 

 tube-feet, and centrally witli a circum-oral water- 

 ring, supplied by a vertical stone-canal which opens 

 on the dorsal surface in a 'madreporic tubercle' 

 between two of the arms ; there are two digestive 

 outgrowths or caeca, of the gut in each arm ; and 

 there are also reproductive organs. Moreover, each 

 arm has a certain independence of life, for a separ- 

 ated arm can grow the other four. 



This theory gives us a vivid anatomical concep- 

 tion of the starfish, but the suggestion of the 

 origin of a starfish from a colony of five worms is 



Fig. 1. Starfishes and Brittle-stars : 



1, Common Starfish (Atteritu ruteiu); 2. Gibbous Starlet 



(Asttrina gibbosa)', 3 Common Starfish, reproducing rays; 



4, Eyed Cribella (CribtUa oculata); 6, Lesser Sand-star 



(Ophiura albida). (From Forbea's British Starfishes.) 



not justified by the embryological facts. The 

 interpretation which regards a five-armed star- 

 fish as a decentralisation of a flattened pentagonal 

 sea-urchin, is more plausible than that which 

 regards the Echinoid as a concentration of a bloated 

 Asteroid. 



Like most Echinoderms, the starfish is very cal- 

 careous. Forming the ventral groove of each arm 

 there are important rafter-like plates called ambul- 

 acral ossicles ; from the more external mesoderm are 



Fig. 2. Longitudinal Section of an Arm : 

 Section through arm and disc of Solaster, showing " mouth, 

 (&) stomach, (c) digestive caeca, (d) reproductive organs, (e) 

 madreporic plate, (/) stone-canal, and (g) tube-feet. 



developed smaller ossicles, superficial spines, and 

 snapping scissor-like pedicellariae. The starfish is 

 not very muscular, but the arms can be bent in 

 various ways, part of the stomach can be protruded, 

 and there are contractile elements in connection 

 with the water-vascular system. Besides the five 

 radial nerves and the circum-oral pentagon, there 

 is a diffuse nervous network beneath the ciliated 

 ectoderm covering the body. Thus the skin is 

 diffusely sensitive, and the little red 'eye' at the 

 tip of each arm is certainly sensitive to light. The 

 mouth is in the centre of the ventral surface ; from 

 the median stomach a pair of digestive cfeca grow 

 out into each arm ; from the short tubular intestine 

 between the stomach and the central dorsal anus, 

 two little outgrowths arise, comparable, it is said, 

 to the respiratory trees of Holothurians. There 

 is a distinct, though not spacious, body-cavity, 

 lined by ciliated epithelium, and containing a 

 fluid with some amoeboid cells, the brownish pig- 

 ment of which perhaps aids in respiration. 



When we watcli a starfish crawling up the side 

 of a rock we see that scores of soft tube-feet are 

 protruded from the ventral groove of each arm, 



