130 REPLACEMENT OF LOST PARTS. 



enemy first became known, the oystermen used to save all that they 

 caught in their tongs and dredges, and pile them in a corner of their 

 boats until evening. Then they would collect them into small packages, 

 and draw a cord around each lot tightly enough to cut through it. This 

 done, the remnants were cast overboard and considered done for. But 

 this was entirely a mistake, as was presently found out. Five out of six 

 of these fragments not only retained life, but renewed the lost parts and 

 became active again. Thus, instead of diminishing the pest, these men 

 were directly increasing it, since they were making two or three new star- 

 fishes out of each captive. It was a case of multiplication by division, 

 which may be an invariable paradox in mathematics, but is by no means 

 always so in zoology. 



Star-fishes often lose one or more of their rays, but reproduce them. 

 Forbes figures one, where four out of the five arms had been broken off 

 in some way, and had just begun to be replaced by the little stubs of new 

 growth. This gave the animal, with one full-sized limb, the shape of a 

 spike-headed bludgeon. Indeed there are certain members of the family, 

 found in all seas, known as Ojphiurans, or snake-armed sea-stars, which 

 are liable to commit apparent suicide, hurling themselves to pieces the 

 instant they are disturbed. The habit belongs, also, to a few larger forms, 

 but, so far as I am aware, is never practised by any of our familiar Amer- 

 ican star-fishes, who seem to prefer to take their chances rather than vol- 

 untarily fling away their limbs. This fragility and spitefulness of certain 

 of the star-fishes is humorously described by Forbes, in his account of one 

 large British seven-armed species, the " lingthorn," or Luidia fragillis- 

 sima. Having been cheated out of a previous specimen by its breaking 

 itself to pieces, Mr. Forbes took with him, on his next collecting expedi- 

 tion, a bucket of cold fresh-water, to which article star-fishes have a great 

 antipathy. "As I expected," he says, "a luidia came up in the dredge — 

 a most gorgeous specimen. As it does not generally break up before it is 

 raised above the surface of the sea, cautiously and anxiously I sunk my 

 bucket to a level with the dredge's mouth, and proceeded in the most gen- 

 tle manner to introduce luidia to the purer element. Whether the cold 

 air was too much for him, or the sight of the bucket too terrific, I know 

 not, but in a moment he proceeded to dissolve his corporation, and at 

 every mesh of the dredge his fragments were seen escaping. In despair 

 I grasped at the largest, and brought up the extremity of an arm with its 

 terminating eye, the spinous eyelid of which opened and closed with some- 

 thing exceedingly like a wink of derision." 



Now that I have spoken, of the "brittle-stars," as the ophiurans are 



