114 
LIFE, IN ITS LOWER FORMS. 
four long slender calcareous rods, arranged two in front 
and two behind, with connecting pieces going across in 
a peculiar manner, and meeting at the top in a slender 
head. 
On this shelly, fragile, and most delicate framework, as 
on a skeleton, are placed the soft parts of the animal, a 
clear gelatinous flesh, forming a sort of semi-oval tunic 
around it, from the summit to the middle, but thence 
downwards the rods individually are merely encased in 
the flesh without mutual connexion. The interior of the 
body displays a large cavity, into which a sort of mouth 
ever and anon admits a gulp of water. Delicate cilia 
cover the whole integument, and are particularly large 
and strong on the flesh of the projecting rods. 
The appearance of this most singular animal is very 
beautiful ; its colour pellucid-white, except the summit of 
the apical knob, and the extremities of the greater rods, 
which are of a lovely rose-colour. It swims in an upright 
position, with a calm and deliberate progression. The 
specimens which we have seen were not more than one- 
fortieth of an inch in length. 
From this form the llrittle-star is developed, hut in a 
manner unparalleled in any other class of animals. The 
exterior figure is not gradually changed, but the star is 
constructed within a particular part of the body of the 
larva, “ like a picture upon its canvas, or a piece of em- 
broidery in its frame, and then takes up into itself the 
digestive organs of the larva.” The plane of the future 
Star-fish is not even the plane of the larva, but one quite 
independent of, and oblique to it. Strange to tell, the 
young Star does not absorb into itself the body of the 
