130 THE SEA-SHORE 





fingers," or "dead men's toes." But as those 

 are not very nice names, we will call these objects 

 " sea fingers." 



Now if you pick up one of these sea fingers 

 and look at it carefully, you will see that its 

 surface is pierced all over with numbers of tiny 

 holes. And if you take a good strong magnifying 

 glass, and look at one of the holes through that 

 you will see that it is shaped like a little flowe 

 with eight petals, or a star with eight rays. 



The fact is .that the sea finger is the home 

 of a most curious animal ; or perhaps one should 

 rather say that it is the home of hundreds of most 

 curious animals. Indeed, it is not at all easy 

 to know which is the right way to describe it. 

 For if you were to take a living sea finger, and 

 to put it into a vessel of clear sea-water, you 

 would very soon notice that a little tiny star- 

 shaped animal had poked itself out of each little 

 star-shaped hole. There would be hundreds of 

 these little animals or "polyps," as they are 

 called altogether. But yet they would only have 

 one body between them, for they are joined 

 together in such a wonderful way that the food 

 which is caught and eaten by one polyp nourishes 

 all the others as well as itself! 



