114 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



(December 23rd) nearly all alive and flourishing, that the wounded 

 stumps of their tentacles have closed up, and that the tentacles are 

 apparently beginning to regenerate. — H. N. Milligan. 



IN SECT A. 



Butterfly Abroad in Dull Weather. — Two or three years ago I 

 noted, on a dull drizzly day, a large white Butterfly flying along the 

 window-boxes in a London street, feeding on the flowers, exactly as 

 if in sunshine. — F. Finn. 



ASTEROIDEA. 



Starfishes Feeding on Hermit-Crabs. — Dr. Bolau has recorded 

 (Kleinere Mitteilungen, in " Der Zoologische Garten," vol. xlvi, 1905, 

 p. 53) his astonishment on discovering that his Starfishes fed on 

 living Hermit-Crabs in an aquarium. I have fed Common Starfishes 

 with dead Hermit-Crabs, and have found that they are readily taken. 

 One Starfish " sat " from the morning of December 3rd until the 

 morning of the 4th on a Turritella shell in which there was a healthy 

 Hermit-Crab of the species known as Eupagurus pubesbens ; but it 

 seems that the Starfish had merely fastened its stomach on the shell, 

 not on the Hermit-Crab itself, and the latter appeared to be none the 

 worse for the encounter when I released it from the grasp of the 

 Starfish on the 4th. Earlier in the year I gave a sluggish Common 

 Hermit-Crab (Eupagurus bemhardus) of average size to a Starfish of 

 medium size at 10.15 a.m., and the former was at once attacked by 

 the latter. The Starfish humped over the shell of the crustacean ; 

 fixed the shell firmly in the angle between the glass front and the 

 floor of the tank, by fastening two arms to the glass and the other 

 three to the floor ; and then it pulled the Hermit-Crab bodily from 

 the shell. The Starfish quitted its prey at about 10.15 a.m. on the 

 following day. It was found on examination that the skin of the 

 crustacean had been punctured at the place where the abdomen joins 

 the thorax, and the greater part of the soft contents of the abdomen 

 and the thorax had been extracted, leaving little but the empty exo- 

 skeleton. This is an excellent example of the way in which the 

 Common Starfish will pass its stomach through a small opening in 

 the body of prey and search its interior. The emptied abdomen of 

 the Hermit-Crab collapsed when it was lifted from the water, but the 

 abdomen had not been separated from the thorax. — H. N. Milligan. 



