ALLEGED POISONOUS PEOPEETIES. 127 



Not a superstition, but an entire error was the belief, which I find 

 still existing in the United States, that the star-fish will poison painfully, 

 if not fatally, the hand of any one touching it. Our oystermen know, 

 better; but I can tell them that the belief is very old. Pliny, who lived 

 during the first century of the Christian era, asserted that star-fishes "can 

 burn all they touch." This proves he took hearsay evidence, which a 

 naturalist is never safe to do, and did not handle them himself to see.. 

 Aldrovandus and Albertus, who wrote a few centuries later, followed the 

 same love of the marvellous, in spite of common-sense and easy proof to 

 the contrary, telling their credulous readers concerning these creatures, 

 that " their nature was so hot they cooked everything they meddled with." 

 Possibly we may find here the origin of the stew, the roast, the take- 

 home-a-fry-in-a-box, which otherwise remains very obscure. Finally, some 

 out-door students came along, picked up star-fishes, found them harmless, 

 and freed the foolish old tomes that called themselves " natural histories," 

 but constantly set nature aside for the marvellous and absurd, from one 

 more taint upon the name of observer. 



The tale did not wholly lose its hold upon the minds of the ignorant, 

 however ; and even the learned have sought, until lately, to prove that 

 some sort of an acrid fluid was discharged by the skin of the animal. 

 This false idea arose, perhaps, from confounding the star-fish with the 

 various Medusce, sometimes called " cross - fishes ;" or, possibly, it is an 

 outgrowth of the attempt to account for the insidious destructiveness of 

 the five-finger, which for a long time was misunderstood. 



In Boston, recently, one of the oldest oyster -dealers and planters 

 gravely instructed me in the manner a star-fish attacks his victim. 



" Crawling round the bottom," he explained, " the star accidently gets 

 afoul a bed of oysters. He don't know what they are, mebbe, but there 

 they all lie with their shells a-gapin', after the nature of oysters. Poking 

 round amongst 'em he accidently, as it were, gets the end of one 'of his 

 arms into an open shell, and the oyster of course shuts down on him. 

 Now, sir, he can't get away, but the oyster can't live but a little while 

 with its shell open, and after a few hours he is dead. Then he lets up, 

 and the star makes a meal off him right there — takes him on the half-shell 

 in his own gravy, as it were." 



This is the first and last time I ever heard an American talk this non- 

 sense, though many have expressed an ignorance of the whole matter, 

 which was a discredit to their eyesight ; but in reading Prof. Edward 

 Forbes's " British Starfishes," where he mentions the cripples so fre- 

 quently taken among star-fishes, I lately found the following paragraph : 



