352 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
previously referred to. In some, while the sub-spheroidal form of the case, or test, is 
still retained, the external spiny armature is greatly varied. In one series these spines are 
exceedingly long, slender, and of needle-like contour and sharpness. In others, while long, they 
are abnormally thick and cylindrical, somewhat resembling slate-pencils, for which they are 
sometimes used as a substitute; or they may be club-shaped, branched, or reduced to 
flattened plates. In other forms the shell itself is conspicuously modified. With some known 
as Blscuit- or Cake-URCIIINS it is flattened out to the resemblance of a cake or biscuit, the 
spines being minute and inconspicuous. In another group, distinguished as Heart-urchins, 
the shell is oval and bilaterally symmetrical, though the dominant number of five still holds 
good with regard to the building up of its structural details. One of the most interesting 
is the Leatiier-URCHIX, so called on account of the flexible and loosely jointed character of 
its shell, the way being paved by such a form to the normally soft- and flexible-skinned 
sea-cucumbers. Sea-urchins are to a great extent vegetable-feeders, and the larger species are 
appreciated as an article of food in many countries, the ovaries, or roe, with which at certain 
periods the shell is mostly filled, forming the edible portion. 
The Sea-cucumbers — better known in the 
commercial world as B 6 che-de-mer, orTrepang — 
represent the only group which possesses a 
substantial market-v'alue. Its typical members 
present an elongate worm-like contour, but pro- 
gress by means of extensile tube-feet, after the 
manner of the Urchins and Star-fishes, and 
have their dental, nervmus, and muscular systems 
fashioned on the same five-sectioned basis. The 
mouth, which is situated at one extremity of the 
body, is surrounded by a series of ten or twenty 
delicately branched or mop-like tentacles, which 
can be protruded or retracted at the animal’s 
will, and are used for seizing food. The skin of 
the typical sea-cucumber is more or less soft and 
flexible, and has embedded within its substance 
innumerable minute calcareous spinules. 
The commercially valuable sea-cucumbers, or 
b^che-de-mer, are all inhabitants of tropical waters, 
the North-eastern Australian coast and the Malay 
seas yielding the most highly prized forms. The 
Queensland Great Barrier Reef, consisting of a 
series of coral-reefs extending for upwards of i,ooo miles at a little distance from the 
Australian mainland, represents one of the most productive areas for this marine delicacy, the 
bulk of which goes to the Chinese market. The fishery is prosecuted with the assistance 
mainly of the Queensland natives, who, either by diving or wading on the reefs at low tide, 
collect the creatures in vast quantities. On being brought to the curing-stations, the animals 
are emptied from the collecting-sacks into large caldrons, where they are allowed to stew in 
their own juice for about twenty minutes. Taken out of the caldrons, they are split open and 
eviscerated, dried for a short interv^al in the sun, and then placed in tiers on wire gratings in 
a smoke-house, where they remain for twenty-four hours. They should at this stage have 
shrunk up to about one quarter of their normally extended size, much resemble charred sausages 
in aspect, and should rattle like dry walnuts when bagged up for exportation. From to 
;^^I50 per ton are the prices that the better qualities of b^che-de-mer realise when well cured 
and delivered at Chinese ports. The chief culinary use to which the cured sea-cucumbers are 
applied is that of the concoction of soup, the best quality prepared taking rank with that 
made from swallows’ nests. At the hotels and clubs in the leading Australian cities b^che- 
A YOUNG BRITTLE STAR-FISH 
(MUCH MAGNIFIED) 
arms of the brittle-stars are composed of loosely fittings 
readily fractured joints 
