282 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
very multiplied ramifications of these, towards the extremities, beiflo 
divided into many thousand very slender appendages, the princip^ 
use of which is doubtless locomotion, but at the same time they com 
stitute a series of living thread-like fillet which seem intended to seiZ e 
and close upon the animals which serve as prey to this little flesh-eate 1 - 
The Asterophyton verrucosum, which is represented in Fig. HE 18 
yellowish ; its disk about four inches, its arms sixteen to eighteen. E 
inhabits the Indian Ocean. Another species, Euryala arborescens, 
met with on the coasts of Sicily and other parts of the Mediterranean 
Nothing can he more elegant than these animated disks, which 
resemble nothing so much as a delicate piece of lace — a piece of living 
lace moving in delicate festoons in the bosom of the ocean. 
Echinid/K. 
The singular shape of the Echinidas, or Sea-urchins, and the spin) 
prolongations with which their bodies are covered, has in all ag eS 
attracted the attention of naturalists. Aristotle applied to them 
name e%tco?, which signifies urchin. When, however, one sees E ie 
body of one of these animals thrown on the sea shore, it is difficult, ^ 
first, to find a reason for this designation. The body of the sea-urem” 
is furnished with a species of spine. It is a sort of shell, nearly 
spherical, empty in the interior, its surface presenting reliefs admiral^ 
for their regularity — an egg-shell sculptured by Divine hands. In ord? J 
to see tho urchin with its spines, it is necessary to seize it in the wal eI 
at the bottom of the sea, where it rolls and moves its little prickly mass > 
it is then only that the real urchin, the prickly sea-urchin, is to be seePj 
bristling with prickles, and strongly resembling, to compare the physic 
with the mental, those amiable mortals whose character is so 
depicted hi the saying, “ Whom they rub they prick.” 
In his book on “ The Sea,” Michelet puts the following conversati 00 
into tho mouth of a sea-urchin : « j 
“ I am born without ambition,” says the modest Ichinoderm. 
ask for none of the brilliant gifts possessed by those gentlemen 
molluscs. I would neither make mother-of-pearl nor pearls; I 
no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which would point me out ; stl ^ 
less do I desire the grace of your giddy Medusas, the waving charm 
whose flaming locks attracts observation and exposes one to shipwrec • 
