94 VOYAGE INTO 



saw, and at the end thereof there is a sharp point. On each 

 side of the second and third plait grow out four legs, that are 

 his oars ; they have a short joint below, wherein these oars 

 are moved ; these they lay in a cross one over the other upon 

 their back, when they feed upon the whale ; or they put them 

 upwards together, as the vaulters do when they jump over 

 swords ; the six hindmost legs are like those of a craivfish; 

 they have three joints on each leg, the foremost whereof are 

 crooked like a half-moon, but before, or on the ends they 

 are very sharp-pointed, so that they can take firm hold of the 

 skin of men as of that of the whale, so that you must cut 

 them in pieces before you can pull them from the skin. He 

 that will have them alive, must cut the skin of the whale out 

 with them. 



They sit on certain places of the whale's body (as between 

 his finns, on his pudenda, and on his lips), where he cannot 

 easily rub himself, and bite pieces out of his skin, as if the 

 birds had eaten him. Some whales are full of lice, and 

 others have never a one ; the warmer the weather is, the 

 more lice they get, as I am informed. 



5. Of the Starfish.i 



I have seen but two sorts of these in my voyage, the first 

 of them have five points or rays, like legs ; it is quite other- 

 wise shaped than those I have seen in the North, Spanish, 

 and Mediterranean Seas. It is of a red colour. Above, upon 

 the plain of its body, it hath five double rows of sharp knobs 

 or grains ; between each of these double rows is a single 

 row of the same knobs, so that in all there is fifteen rows of 

 knobs on the whole plain. These fifteen rows together make 

 a star of five outward bended points. 



As for the rest, this plain looketh like the back of a spider, 



^ A species of Ophiolepis, the Asterias Ophiura of Linnojus, Syst. Nat., 

 1,1100. 



