42 Life and Immortality. 



ease and facility as progression on plane surfaces is effected. 

 Perforating the arms, or rays, and i-ssuing from apertures, will 

 be found large numbers of membranous tubes, which prove 

 to be the feet of the animal. Upon careful examination the 

 latter will be found to consist of two parts, a bladder-like 

 portion, resident within the body, and a tubular outlying pro- 

 jection, ending in a disk-shaped sucker, thus showing the 

 feet to be muscular cylinders, hollow in the centre, and very 

 extensible. In progression the animal extends a few of its 

 feet, attaches its suckers to the rocks or stones and then, by 

 retracting its feet, draws the body forward. Like that of the 

 tortoise, its pace is slow and sure. But the most singular 

 thing about this singular animal is its manner of overcoming 

 obstructions, which it must certainly perceive, judging from 

 the preparations to surmount them which it makes at the 

 opportune moment. 



In addition to organs of locomotion Star-fishes possess 

 blood-vessels, digestive and respiratory apparatus, and a 

 nervous system of a very low order, an inference to which 

 its seeming capacity of enduring vivisection without pain 

 unmistakably leads. 



Interesting as its manner of progression, even under the 

 most trying circumstances, must be, yet there is nothing in 

 the life of this lowly-organized animal that has half the charm 

 to the true lover and student of nature than the mother 

 Star's devotion to her young. Her eggs she carries in little 

 pouches placed at the base of the rays. When emitted through 

 an opening, which occasionally and unintentionally occurs, 

 the mother does not abandon them to the cruel charities of 

 the ocean world, but gathers them together, forming a kind 

 of protecting cover of them, very much like a hen brooding 

 over her chickens. Her actions bespeak an anxiety which 

 could only be born of an affection, as real and sympathetic 

 as that which a human mother feels for the loss of any of her 

 offspring. No matter how often the eggs become accident- 

 ally scattered, the mother does not grow weary of her charges 



