ECHINODERMATA. 69 



would scarcely be formidable to animals possessed of any 

 strength ; armed, however, as the rays have been seen to 

 be with hundreds of tenacious suckers, escape from such 

 a grasp is hopeless, for prey once seized is secured by 

 every part of its surface, and in spite of its utmost efforts, 

 is speedily dragged towards the mouth of the star-fish, 

 and engulphed in its capacious maw. Small crabs and 



FlG. 46. FIGURE OF SUN-STAR SOLASTER PAPPOSA. 



small shell-fish are swallowed entire, for the stomach id 

 amazingly dilatable ; but shell-fish of large size are not 

 the less the victims of the creature's voracity, although it 

 cannot swallow them whole. The destruction which it 

 commits among oysters was well-known to the ancients, 

 who believed that it obtained its supper by inserting one 

 of its rays, after the manner of an oyster-knife, between 

 the shells when the oyster happened to lie with them 

 partially open, and that it then gradually forced itself in 

 till the prey came in contact with its mouth. This pro- 

 cedure, although sufficiently ingenious, is not the mode 

 pursued, at least by our modern star-fish, which has the 

 singular faculty of turning its stomach inside out and 

 pouring from it a poisonous secretion, which being intro- 

 duced between the shells of the oyster deprives it of all 

 power of closing its valves. The protruded stomach of 

 the star-fish is then thrust in, and enveloping the poor 

 oyster in its folds, literally eats it out of house and home. 



