CHAPTER VII 

 STARFISHES 



STARFISHES' LEGS 



r\F course you know starfishes very well indeed 

 by sight, for they are flung up in numbers 

 on the beach by almost every tide. But I 

 wonder if you know where their legs are ! 



Perhaps you did not know that they have any 

 legs. But they have hundreds and hundreds 

 of them. Only, instead of keeping their legs 

 outside their bodies, as we keep ours, starfishes 

 always keep them inside, and poke them out 

 through little holes in the skin when they are 

 required for use. 



If you want to see the legs of a starfish, you 

 can very easily do so. First of all, you must 

 catch a starfish, and make quite sure that he 

 is alive. You can easily find out that by picking 

 him up. If his rays are quite limp and flabby, 

 and hang downwards from the disc, or middle 

 part of his body, so that they look rather like 

 the legs of a table, he is dead, and you can 

 throw him away. But if they stand out stiffly 

 he is alive. Then just put him into a pool of 

 sea-water, and wait. After a few minutes you 



105 



