MICROSCOPICAL STUDIES. 11 



life, rivalling in slender gracefulness even the rare beauty of the 

 ferns. To those who have however seen it in life among its natural 

 surroundings, the charm deepens, and Antedon is for ever linked with 

 happy life-marks fondly remembered. Shall I ever forget that day 

 out lobster-potting with an old fisherman, when the first pot we 

 pulled up, was fairly encrusted with the rosy twining pinnated arms 

 of this most lovely of starfishes ! Surely if the fisherman's calling is 

 rough and uninviting at times, such experiences as these go far to 

 compensate. Rough fellows most are, but the sea has a silent 

 eloquence that finds its way to their hearts, and to those who have 

 served the apprenticeship, its fascination is magical ; even I, who 

 have other pleasures, and have never been fairly inoculated, have still 

 at times to respond to the urgent calling of the sea. 



Antedon is fairly common around the British Coast; in favorable 

 localities occurring in great multitudes. In anatomy it differs 

 extremely from the ordinary stout starfishes, such as the common 

 cross-fish Astei-ias rubens, but as we are not concerned at the present 

 with its anatomy, suffice it to note that its body consists of a disc 

 some \ inch across, from which proceed ten long slender arms bearing 

 numerous pinnules on either side, these often reach 3J inches in 

 length so that the animal has a full span of 7 inches. The sexes are 

 separate, and the genital organs are located not in the body disc, but 

 in the tiny pinnules of the arms. The fertilized ova are set free 

 as barrel-shaped embryos which acquire four encircling or zonal 

 bands of cilia — the hoops of the barrel — propelling it through the 

 water. Next appear a few minute calcareous plates within this 

 embryo, forming as it were, a tiny cask set up on an even more tiny 

 stalk. Free-swimming life being now all but ended, a disk containing a 

 perforated plate appears at the lower extremity of the stalk, and by 

 this, attachment is made to any object that happens in the way ; it 

 may be the stiff framework of a colony of Hydrozoa or of Polyzoa, or 

 it may be a frond of the great oar-weed (Lamina ria). All this time 

 the soft barrel-shaped mass of the swimming larva has been shrinking 

 and adapting itself to the form of the enclosed calcareous skeleton, 

 and now the creature is fairly launched upon the stalked and anchored 

 period of its life. 



In this stage the skeleton is made up of a basal plate (PI. II, 

 fig. 2, t. pi.) where the animal is rooted to its host ; a considerable 

 number of joints set end to end, forming the stalk, upon which 

 is seated the cup-shaped framework of the body, consisting of 

 two circles of large perforated plates, the members of each, superposed 

 to one another. These are respectively the basals (bs) and the 

 orals (or), the former forming the base of the cup, supported on 



