I2O Human Physiology. 



the disabled prey falling into the monster's mouth ; some have 

 instruments or solvent juices for boring in wood, or stone, or 

 the shells of other species; some float near the surface of the 

 water by means of air-bladders. The Portuguese Man-of-war 

 floats with a large air-bladder, and throws out its cables, 12 to 

 1 8 feet long, with which it entangles small fishes for its food. 

 One ocean shell-fish floats by means of a raft of air vesicles 

 attached to its foot, and to this raft its eggs are suspended. 

 The sea urchin, whose orange-shaped shell is well known so 

 complex in its forms and full of minute holes throws out from 

 each of these pores a perfectly formed sucker, flexible and 

 retractile like an elephant's trunk. By means of these 1,860 

 suckers, each a perfect machine, this round, hard-shelled 

 animal can climb a smooth perpendicular rock, walk along the 

 roof of a cavern, or bury itself in the sand. 



The star-fishes are provided with elaborately-formed suckers 

 for seizing food, climbing, and moving about. Some secrete 

 poison, with which they kill the oysters they eat When the 

 brittle star-fish is alarmed it throws oft all its arms, breaking 

 them in fragments, and then at its leisure grows a new set a 

 wonderful power of life which it has in common with crabs, 

 lobsters, spiders, etc. 



Among the lower orders of marine animals, no one, perhaps, 

 has such strange, wonderful, and terrible powers as the Poulpe, 

 a kind of cuttle-fish, which has been called the lion of the sea. 

 This astounding beast grows in the tropic seas to a great size, 

 weighing in some cases 4,000 Ibs., 15 or 20 feet long, with 

 eight arms 5 to 6 feet long; a strong and horrible creature who 

 walks with his head down, swims rapidly backward, emits an 

 inky secretion which darkens the water around him, and pro- 

 pels himself by a sort of hydrostatic engine, by ejecting water 

 from a tube, a method of propulsion lately adapted to steamers, 

 but found in many kinds of aquatic animals. The eight arms 

 of this creature are each furnished with 120 pairs of elaborately- 



