176 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



have seen one little bigger than a pea quietly 

 marching up the red side of a relative ten times 

 its size. I have also noticed that they will move 

 to different parts of a stone during a single day. 



Starfish of all sizes are common enough on most 

 of our beaches, especially where there is sand and 

 shingle, and are, of course, easy enough to photo- 

 graph. They exist in such vast numbers in some 

 parts of the sea that it is quite useless for fisher- 

 men to lay down lines, because the bait is all 

 sucked off the hooks long before the fish it is 

 desired to catch have a chance of finding it. Many 

 people think that all starfish found upon the beach 

 are dead, but this is by no means the case. Those 

 that are rigid and firm to the touch are alive, 

 although they are unable to show it by skipping 

 about like sand fleas. 



Sea urchins, or sea eggs, may sometimes be 

 fished up out of the water, in which case they are, 

 unlike those thrown up by the waves, in possession 

 of their peculiar spines which give them a resem- 

 blance to hedgehogs, hence the name of urchin. 

 The illustration upon the opposite page represents a 

 sea urchin and small starfish just where we found 

 them on the shores of a Shetland Voe much fre- 

 quented by gulls. 



On some shores mussels are to be met with 

 literally in millions. Whilst on the eastern side of 

 the Noup of Noss last summer I noticed that every 

 particle of rock, from high-water mark down to the 



