NATURAL HOME OF THE STAR-FISH. 131 



well called, I may as well. quote Mr. Forbes's account of the trouble they 

 give on the French and English coasts, which entitles them to a place in 

 this essay on an enemy of the shell-fisheries. He remarks : 



" The common brittle-star often congregates in great numbers on the 

 edges of scallop-banks, and I have seen a large dredge come up complete- 

 ly filled with them; a most curious sight, for when the dredge was emp- 

 tied, these little" creatures, writhing with the strangest contortions, crept 

 about in all directions, often flinging their arms in broken pieces around 

 them, and their snake-like and threatening attitudes were by no means 

 relished by the boatmen, who anxiously asked permission to shovel them 

 overboard, superstitiously remarking ' the things weren't altogether right.' 

 Rondeletins . . . says they prey on little shells and crabs. They constitute 

 a favorite article of diet in the codfish's bill of fare, and great numbers of 

 them are often found in the stomach of that fish." 



Star-fishes are rarely found dwelling upon a muddy bottom, nor do 

 they like clean sand very well. Upon the mud it is difficult for them to 

 move about; while the open, smooth sand holds little food, and is likely 

 to be shifted by a storm too quickly for them to escape burial. Their 

 home, therefore, is chosen on rocky coasts, where submerged reefs afford 

 plenty of craggy points for them to cling to, and where crannies at once 

 serve as homes for the animals they feed upon, and safe hiding-places for 

 themselves. Beds of jingles (Anomia), deckheads (Patella), key -hole 

 limpets and other rock-loving mollusks, are strongholds of star-fish life. 



The amount of damage done to the oyster-fisheries of the American 

 coast by sea-stars became an object of constant inquiry by me during my 

 investigation into the condition and statistics of the oyster products and 

 industries of the United States as a special agent of the Tenth Census. 



This pest I found to be confined to northerly waters. To the south- 

 ward of Sandy Hookj at the utmost, no harm is reported, since the star- 

 fishes are extremely few, and almost wholly confined to the mussel-beds 

 in the inlets. At Eastport, Maine, all attempts to bed down northern 

 stock, or to transplant and raise any northern seed-oysters, have been com- 

 pletely frustrated by hordes of giant star-fish, which ate up the mollusks 

 almost as fast as they could be put down. Here, then, the sea-stars are 

 responsible for an entire disuse of otherwise available privileges for oys- 

 ter-culture. 



The same condition of affairs exists to a great extent on the rest of the 

 coast of Maine, and I am not sure but the mysterious extinction, at about 

 the date of the advent of Europeans, of the once extensive living beds of 

 oysters between the mouths of the Kennebec and the Merrimac, was large- 



