148 New York State Museum 



mouth are its most marked characteristic. The Fringed 

 Worm (Cirratulus grandis) too, is common in burrows 

 in sandy and gravelly beaches at low-water mark. The 

 body is dull, brownish yellow in color and there are a 

 large number of long, red or orange colored threads, the 

 gills, arising from the sides of the body and especially 

 numerous around the head. These gills are thrust out 

 into the water above while the worm is safely hidden in 

 its burrow. There is a worm-shaped creature known as 

 the Acorn Worm (Balanoglossus kotvalevskii) , which is 

 found in shallow water below low-tide level from Massa- 

 chusetts bay to the Carolinas. It lives in tubular burrows 

 about five inches long in sandy beaches. This is not a 

 worm, however, but is a more highly developed form be- 

 longing to the chordate phylum with the ascidians. 



Echinoderms are well represented. The two common 

 starfishes, already discussed, are found on the sandy 

 beaches off our coasts. A large starfish, the Giant Star- 

 fish (Pentaceros reticularis), is found on sandy bottoms 

 off the Florida coast and the West Indies, usually at 

 depths greater than ten feet. This is the largest starfish, 

 having a disk five inches thick and one and a half feet in 

 diameter. Other species of starfish occur on our eastern 

 and western coasts, some of them many-rayed, such as 

 the red and purplish, twelve to fifteen-armed Crossaster 

 common along the New England coast. Among the 

 urchins are the Sand Dollar (Echinarachnius parma) 

 which swarms upon sandy bottoms from New Jersey to 

 the Arctic and Pacific, and is cast ashore by the thou- 

 sands during every great storm. This form is three 

 inches in diameter, flat with a rounded edge, and covered 

 with short brown spines. An indelible ink is obtained 

 through pounding up Sand Dollars in water. Though 



