130 ECHINODERMATA. 



speaks of " some beautiful echini or sea-eggs, with long green and purple 

 spines", in St Mark's bay, on the coast of the former island. " These 

 sea-eggs are eaten by poorer persons, but I have not courage to taste 

 them," p. 139. 



OLIVI, the Natural Historian of the Adriatic Sea, says, he endeavour- 

 ed to persuade the Venetian fishermen that they might profit by con- 

 verting a species of urchin called Molo to food, being abundant, and of 

 large size. Some of them complied, but this fishery was soon abandoned, 

 from want of patronage, and from insufficient prices to reward their in- 

 dustry ; Oliri, Zoologia Adriatica, p. 73, Bassano 1792, in 4to. 



Nothing but the roe was ever supposed to be adapted for food ; 

 and this possibly still continues on certain parts of the coast of Italy. 



Pedicel/aria. Plate XXXII. figs. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. The atten- 

 tion of naturalists has been long directed to a peculiar animated or- 

 ganization incorporated with the Echinus, of which no satisfactory 

 explanation is yet given. At first Miiller, otherwise so competent 

 a judge, determined this to be an independent animal product, tmi 

 ytwrix, established as a parasite on the Echinus, of which there might 

 be various species, and he constituted a new genus for its reception, 

 under the name Pedicellaria. But this is a very obscure and doubtful 

 subject, which, with all the appearance of easy solution, seems more and 

 more involved in difficulty, notwithstanding the study of subsequent 

 naturalists, so that at the present day it remains almost equally myste- 

 rious as originally. 



Numerous short hairs, with a peculiar summit or extremity, are in- 

 terspersed amidst the spines of the Echinus, and apparently implanted 

 on the epidermis of the shell, or, it may be, immediately on the shell it- 

 self, for these facts are not yet ascertained. These, the Pedicellaria;, are 

 void of any resemblance, in form, substance, or action, to the spines or 

 suckers. They are of two different species, or at least of two different 

 aspects, but whether merely different stages in the growth of the same 



