274 ROSY FEATHER-STAR. 



animal, dependent upon its own exertions for sub- 

 sistence. 



It is no uncommon thing, as a late writer forcibly 

 remarks, in the inferior classes of the animal kingdom, 

 to find animals permanently attached from the 

 period of their birth, and during all their existence. 

 Familiar examples of this occur in the oyster, and 

 various other bivalve shell -fish, as well as in numerous 

 compound zoophytes. We likewise meet with races 

 which are free and locomotive in their first stages, 

 and afterwards become permanently fixed; but an 

 animal growing for a period in the similitude of a 

 flower on a stem, and then dropping from its pedicle, 

 and becoming during the remainder of its life free 

 and peripatetic, is not only new, but without any 

 parellel in the whole range of the organized creation. 



The Comatula, or as it is commonly called, the 

 Rosy Feather-star, is allowed to be without exception 

 the most lively of all the star-fishes. Its movements 

 in swimming are said to resemble exactly the alter- 

 nating strokes given by the medusa to the liquid 

 element, and have the same effect, causing the animal 

 to raise itself from the bottom, and to advance back 

 foremost even more rapidly than the medusa. It 

 has ten very slender rays with numbers of long 

 beards on the sides. The body, which is of a deep 

 rose colour, is small and surrounded with ten little 

 filiform rays. The extremities of these organs are 

 shaped like claws, by means of which the animal 



