42 Life and Immortahty. 
ease and facility as progression on plane surfaces is effected. 
Perforating the arms, or rays, and issuing from apertures, will 
be found large numbers of membranous tubes, which prove 
to be the feet of the animal. Upon careful examination the 
latter will be found to consist of two parts, a bladder-like 
portion, resident within the body, and a tubular outlying pro- 
jection, ending in a disk-shaped sucker, thus showing the 
feet to be muscular cylinders, hollow in the centre, and very 
extensible. In progression the animal extends a few of its 
feet, attaches its suckers to the rocks or stones and then, by 
retracting its feet, draws the body forward. Like that of the 
tortoise, its pace is slow and sure. But the most singular 
thing about this singular animal is its manner of overcoming 
obstructions, which it must certainly perceive, judging from 
the preparations to surmount them which it makes at the 
opportune moment. 
In addition to organs of locomotion Star-fishes possess 
blood-vessels, digestive and respiratory apparatus, and a 
nervous system of a very low order, an inference to which 
its seeming capacity of enduring vivisection without pain 
unmistakably leads. 
Interesting as its manner of progression, even under the 
most trying circumstances, must be, yet there is nothing in 
the life of this lowly-organized animal that has half the charm 
to the true lover and student of nature than the mother 
Star’s devotion to her young. Her eggs she carries in little 
pouches placed at the base of the rays. When emitted through 
an opening, which occasionally and unintentionally occurs, 
the mother does not abandon them to the cruel charities of 
the ocean world, but gathers them together, forming a kind 
of protecting cover of them, very much like a hen brooding 
over her chickens. Her actions bespeak an anxiety which 
could only be born of an affection, as real and sympathetic 
as that which a human mother feels for the loss of any of her 
offspring. No matter how often the eggs become accident- 
ally scattered, the mother does not grow weary of her charges 
