CHAPTER VII. 

 SEA-STARS AND SEA-URCHINS. 



AT low-water, turning over stones and looking into rock- 

 crevices, we are sure to come across members of the 

 Echinodermata the creatures with tough and rough or spiny 

 coverings, popularly known as Star-fish and Sea-urchins. 

 There are many forms of these to be found on the British 

 coasts, though some of them are peculiar to deep-water, and 

 not likely to fall in our way, unless it be their dead bodies 

 washed up to our part of the shore. But we can obtain a fair 

 knowledge of the class to which they belong, from the speci- 

 mens we can find living their lives in our own littoral zone. 

 Here, hunched up into an almost globular form under this 

 drooping mass of leathery wrack, is the common Five-fingers, 

 Cross-fish, or Star-fish (LJraster rubens). Turning him on his 

 back we see the reason for the contracted condition of his 

 five rays: in the hollow thus formed he holds no less than 

 three specimens of the Purple or Dog-winkle. Why ? He is 

 a glutton, and is eating those three poor mollusks at one 

 sitting. 



Not many years ago we all believed literally the tales that 

 were told of the Star-fish swallowing oysters as large or larger 

 than itself. It was well known that they caused havoc to 

 oyster and mussel beds, and that seemed the most likely way 

 in which the valuable bivalve would be destroyed. Some 

 went so far as to assert that Five-fingers waited his opportunity 

 to catch the oyster gaping, and then slipped in one of his fingers, 

 and so prevented the shell closing. It was left to the imagina- 

 tion to picture that same finger hooking out the native and 

 swallowing it in the approved fashion off the shell. 



