Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/181

Rh their numbers, that they were thrown up on the shore in large, loathsome, squirming balls. Says Verrill, "In one instance within a few years, at Westport, Connecticut, they destroyed about 2,000 bushels of oysters, occupying beds about twenty acres in extent, in a few weeks, during the absence of the proprietor."

It is curious to read the silly stories that are told in the name of Natural History. There is one that says that the star-fish puts its fingers or rays into the oyster's shell, and helps itself. From every point of consideration the thing is ridiculously impossible. A more sober judgment is that given by some naturalists, namely, that the sea-star protrudes its great sac-like stomach, and envelops to a great extent the oyster therein, and so leisurely digests the mollusk out of its unopened shell, much as a codfish does the shells it swallows.



After having seen young star-fishes eat small specimens (that is, such as were suited to their size) of oysters, mussels, and scollops, which I have fed to them in an aquarium, I give the following as based on a number of observations: Having brought the oval, or stomach orifice, exactly opposite the nib of the oyster, the star embraces the bivalve with its five flexible rays, aided by the hundreds of sucking-disks on the tiny feet. Thus positioned, the star-fish clings firmly, but keeps itself quite still, and waits very patiently. After a while, the instinct of the oyster will be at fault, and it will open, as if no enemy were near. At this moment, as it seems to me, is injected from the oral orifice of the star a baleful "sidereal blast." It is a something that paralyzes the mollusk; because, from that moment the valves of the oyster are opened to their full extent, and the hold of the flexible rays is relaxed. Instantly a singular variation of the performance sets in. The rays are withdrawn and set back to back—the stomach is protruded, and the doubled-up star intrudes itself into the oyster, the evicted stomach leading the way in the movement, and absorbing its victim. If the famous "India-rubber man" could throw backward his arms, legs, and head, and in this position could then infuse