4948 Tuer ZooLocist—JuNE, 1876. 
newspaper of April 27, 1872, the following paragraph, which I 
scarcely incline to revoke, except under pressure of more conclusive 
evidence than I at present possess :— 
* All the sea-stars are exceedingly greedy animals, and greatly 
addicted to the consumption of oysters. Regardless as they are of 
their own lives and their own entirety, they are still more careless 
of the lives of others: the oyster is torn from his stronghold, and 
devoured while still in possession of his most vigorous, though 
sedate, existence. All the fishermen are aware of this penchant 
for oysters on the part of the sea-stars, and attribute their loss of 
limb to a too-great eagerness to gratify this appetite. They say 
that the oyster, who is fond of fresh air, always sleeps with the 
door of his cottage ajar; and that the sea-star, who is always 
walking about the oyster-beds, seeking, like man’s spiritual enemy, 
whom he may devour, espies an unusually fair and fat mollusk 
peacefully slumbering in her wigwam, and exclaims to himself, 
‘ Here’s a delicious native! snip!’ and forthwith seizes her by the 
beard—all oysters have beards, regardless of sex. ‘Snap,’ says 
the oyster, seizing the starfish by the leg. The marauder is very 
indifferent to the proceeding; he merely jerks off his leg and 
leaves it to its fate, well aware that Nature will supply him with a 
substitute as soon as he requires one; so he walks off again, bent 
on gratifying his appetite as before. By the way, there is a 
superiority in the substituted leg of a starfish over those in use 
among our sailors and soldiers, inasmuch as they are made of the 
same material as those that have been lost, and therefore accom- 
modate themselves more readily to the exigencies of the case.” 
I have also anticipated Mr. Kent’s objection some three or four 
years before it was made :—“‘ Some have affected to disbelieve 
the accounts of the predatory warfare carried on by the starfish 
against the oysters; but although the fisherman’s account of the 
modus operandi may not be perfectly reliable or strictly scientific 
in its details, still it appears certain that the sea-stars consume a 
large number of oysters. In order to account for the starfish 
getting at the ‘natives’ so readily, it has been suggested that the 
starfish has the ability to secrete an acid sufficiently powerful to 
dissolve the hinge of the bivalve, but I feel scarcely willing to 
accept this solution.” 
Epwarp NEwMAN. 
