Starfishes and Urchins. 



65 



C. frondosa, vvhicli may measure a foot, one side of tlie body, 

 the upper, as the animal hes on the sand, is reddish brown, 

 the other pinkish white. The tubular feet are wart-like and 

 irregularly scattered on the lower surface in Holoiliuria nigra, 

 the Cotton-spinner, so called by the Cornish fishermen from its 

 habit of throwing out, through the anal aperture, long sticky, 

 thread-hke tubes which they compare to cotton. Another Holo- 

 thurian, Synapta inh^rens, onl}' two inches long, is sometimes 

 found in shallow water in Devonshire and Cornwall as well as on 

 the West Coast of Scotland, and may be dug out of its burrows 



■HOLOTHURIANS, SEA-CUCUMBERS : HOLOTHURIA 

 CUCUMARIA PENTACTES, SYNAPTA DIGITATA. 



in the sand at low tide. The aUied species here figured, S. digitata, 

 occurs only in deeper water (ten to twenty fathoms). The body 

 is very elongate and the feet are absent or quite vestigial. 

 With its fringe of tentacles round the mouth Synapta might 

 well be taken for a worm, and without entering into lengthy 

 anatomical details, which would surely be out of place in this 

 book, we are unable to demonstrate that it is not a worm, but 

 a highly degraded Echinoderm 



