GEEGAEIOUS AND MIGEATOEY HABITS. 135 



big as a barrel, and was rolled along on the bottom by the tide. When 

 it struck the feeding-ground it went to pieces, and the individual mem- 

 bers at once began to devour the oyster next to them, beginning with the 

 tenderest. I discredit the truth of this statement, since I never could 

 find an actual witness of such a phenomenon. The nearest I came to it 

 was this: Captain Eaton, an old oysterman, whom. I saw at New Haven, 

 told me that several years ago, when he was with his brother at Norwalk, 

 they raked up one end of a cylindrical roll of star.-fishes clinging tightly 

 together, which they hauled into their boat until it would contain no 

 more, when they had to break the roll or " string," as he called it, which 

 was a foot or more in diameter. He did not mention any core inside of 

 this cylindrical bod} 7 , which was solid star-fishes and nothing else. 



There is no reference in books, that I know of, to anything of this 

 nature, except that Forbes quotes a French writer, Deslonchamps, of 1825, 

 who says that on the French coast, when the tide was out, and while two 

 or three inches of water remained on the sand, "he saw balls of Asterias 

 rubens, five or six in a ball, their arms interlacing, rolling out. In the 

 centres of the balls were Mactrce stultorum [a kind of large clam] in 

 various states of destruction, but always unable to close the valves, and 

 apparently dead." 



How much faith is to be put in this account, credited and repeated 

 by many fishermen, and how much of it is pure fable, is hard to say from 

 present data. In general it is known that our star-fishes live and breed 

 among the rocks, begin to feed in summer, but do not move about much 

 when once they strike a feeding-ground, and either perish or retreat to 

 deep water when the cold of winter approaches. Mussels are preferred 

 to oysters or clams, though I have heard it asserted that they will even 

 make their way into a quahaug, if hard pressed. The smaller, thin-shelled 

 bivalves fall an easy prey to them. One of these {Area virgata?) is called 

 the " blood-qnahaug," and the Providence River men say that when it is 

 present the star-fish will take little else. 



The only offsetting value in this plague, that I am aware of, is its use- 

 fulness as a manure, for which purpose those taken by the oystermen are 

 saved. They are especially recommended for grape-vines. Large quan- 

 tities are thus made use of in Great Britain and France. 



" Anciently," as I have read, "the urasters were used in medicine. 

 They were given internally as a decoction with wine, in hysterical dis- 

 eases and against epilepsy. The physicians of old times, members of a 

 profession never very remarkable for logical acumen, applied them ex- 

 ternally in hernia, from some fancifnl analogy between their pouting 



