272 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
liquid is instant death to these creatures, which in this condition perish 
suddenly before they have time to mutilate themselves. The star-fish 
is a curious ornament in our natural history collections, but in th 1B 
state they represent very imperfectly the elegance and particular 
grace of this curious type. To understand the star-fishes, they nuD 
be seen in an aquarium, where we can admire the form, figure, more 
ments, and manners of these marvellous beings. 
The Asterias is the constellation of the sea. It is said that heave 11 ) 
reflected during the night on the silvery surface of the ocean, ^ 
one of the stars which decorate the resplendent vaults fall into h s 
depths. 
Cbikoidea. 
and 
We quoted the maxim of Linnaeus in the earlier pages of this volume 
that. Nature makes no leaps. Nature proceeds by means of insensibl e 
transitions, rising by degrees from one organic form to another. 
of the animals hitherto described are immovably fixed to some sob 1 
object ; at least, such is their condition in the adult state. We 
about to describe zoophytes, free of all fetters; animals “which walk >n 
their strength and liberty.” 
Between zoophytes fixed to the soil, like the corals, gorgons. 
aggregate zoophytes, such as sea-urchins and holothurias, Nature h lS 
placed an intermediate race, namely, the Crinoi'dea, a class of zoophyte 
which are attached to a rock by a sort of root armed with cla"'^ 
having a long flexible stem, which enables them to execute movement 
in the circle limited only by the length of this stem, just as the ox ° r 
goat in our paddocks is confined by its tether to the space circus*' 
scribed by the length of its rope. 
Let the reader picture to himself a star-fish borne upon the summ 
of a flexible stem firmly rooted in the soil, and he has a genes* 1 
idea of the zoophytes which compose the order of the Crino'id efl " 
Naturalists of the seventeenth century bestowed the name of sto ll(! 
lilies on these curious products. This rather poetical image p r ° vt 'j 
that the conformation of these creatures had at an early p erl 
attracted observation, presenting the naturalist with the most curio 11 * 
of his lessons. The encrinites raise, as from the dead, a whole w° r 1 
buried in the abyss of the past. At the present time only trvo gend !l 
it 
