280 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



very multiplied ramifications of these, towards the extremities, being 

 divided into many thousand very slender appendages, the principal 

 use of which is doubtless locomotion, but at the same time they con- 

 stitute a series of living thread-like fillets which seem intended to seize 

 and close upon the animals which serve as prey to this little flesh-eater. 

 The Asterophyton verrucosum, which is represented in Fig. Ill, is 

 yellowish ; its disk about four inches, its arms sixteen to eighteen. It 

 inhabits the Indian Ocean. Another species, Euryala arbor escens, is 

 met with on the coasts of Sicily and other parts of the Mediterranean. 

 Nothing can be more elegant than these animated disks, which 

 resemble nothing so much as a delicate piece of lace a piece of living 

 lace moving in delicate festoons in the bosom of the ocean. 



The singular shape of the Echinidge, or Sea-urchins, and the spiny 

 prolongations with which their bodies are covered, has in all ages 

 attracted the attention of naturalists. Aristotle applied to them the 

 name e^o?, which signifies urchin. When, however, one sees the 

 body of one of these animals thrown on the sea shore, it is difficult, at 

 first, to find a reason for this designation. The body of the sea-urchin 

 is furnished with a species of spine. It is a sort of shell, nearly 

 spherical, empty in the interior, its surface presenting reliefs admirable 

 for their regularity an egg-shell sculptured by Divine hands. In order 

 to see the urchin with its spines, it is necessary to seize it in the water 

 at the bottom of the sea, where it rolls and moves its little prickly mass ; 

 it is then only that the real urchin, the prickly sea-urchin, is to be seen, 

 bristling with prickles, and strongly resembling, to compare the physical 

 with the mental, those amiable mortals whose character is so well 

 depicted in the saying, " Whom they rub they prick." 



In his book on " The Sea," Michelet puts the following conversation 

 into the mouth of a sea-urchin : 



" I am born without ambition," says the modest Echinoderm. " I 

 ask for none of the brilliant gifts possessed by those gentlemen the 

 molluscs. I would neither make mother-of-pearl nor pearls ; I have 

 no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which would point me out ; still 

 less do I desire the grace of your giddy Medusas, the waving charm of 

 whose flaming locks attracts observation and exposes one to shipwreck. 



