Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/332

 320 STAR FISH most odious instruments in overthrowing the liberties of the people. Every misdemeanor, and especially those of public importance for which the law had provided no sufficient pun- ishment, seems to have come within the scope of its inquiry. Among these were corruption, breach of trust, and malfeasance in public affairs, attempts to commit felony, or breach of proclamations ; and to such an extent was its authority stretched under the Stuarts, that, according to Clarendon, "any disrespect to any acts of state, or to the persons of states- men, was in no time more penal, and the foun- dations of right never more in danger to be destroyed." The mode of process was gen- erally by information filed at the suit of the attorney general, or, in certain cases, of a pri- vate relator, and in other respects resembled that familiar to the court of chancery. Although the court was held incompetent to pronounce sentence of death, tines, imprisonment, the pillory, whipping, branding, and various spe- cies of maiming were freely resorted to. After flourishing with constantly increasing power for upward of a century, as thus constituted, the court of the star chamber was finally abol- ished by act of parliament in 1641. STAR FISH, the popular name of the radiated animals of the class of echinoderms and the order asterioids, well exemplified by the com- mon species of the New England coasts, the five-fingered Jack of the sailors. The quinary arrangement prevails to a remarkable extent in the star fishes. The body is depressed, and divided into rays like a star ; the upper surface is studded with rough knobs, varying in color with the species, but generally reddish or yel- lowish, between which are the openings of many very minute tubes for the passage of wa- ter in and out of the body ; the skin is coria- ceous, and contains the above named corpus- cles, beneath which is a cutaneous skeleton of porous calcareous pieces, movably articulated, and extending on the lower surface from the mouth in the centre to the end of the rays.' In the lacunte between these pieces are the am- bulacral pores, along the centre of the lower surface of each ray, through which are pro- truded the ambulacral tubes; these are the principal organs of locomotion, are arranged in a double or quadrangular row, and are pro- vided with contractile sacs or vesicles on the inner surface of the envelope ; the tubes are constantly in motion, each ending in a sucto- rial disk, and pull the animal along as by the successive action of so many little anchors. On the external edges of the rays are series of stiff spines, probably serving for protection, and at the end of each ray is a small reddish eye speck; there are also scattered over the upper surface small processes ending in cal- careous hooks or pincers. The mouth opens into the stomachal cavity, from whieh branch- ing caecal tubes extend to the extremity of each arm ; they have no long tentacles like the sea anemone (actinia), but the stomach can be everted over their food and then be turned back again ; the mouth is very dilatable, and will admit large mollusks with the shell, the hard parts being ejected after the soft portions are digested. There is great variety in the spreading, division, and subdivision of the arms, and in the relative size of the central disk, but all are arranged after the radiated plan ; the rays can be bent in any direction, according to the will of the animal, by the contractile skin and muscles. The slender ophiurans progress by the undulatory move- ments of the rays, which, when very slender, long, and branching, have no eyes at the tips ; there is generally no anal aperture, and if any it is on the dorsal surface. By the action of cilia water flows through the body, through the aquiferous system, distending and pro- truding the ambulacral feet, filling the circular vessel around the mouth, and serving for res- piration, which, according to Siebold, is per- formed partly by the vesicular appendages attached to the central ring ; all the viscera are bathed in water, and respiration is also effect- ed through the delicate blood vessels there- on distributed. The vascular system is very simple ; the nervous ganglia are five, arranged around the mouth, each sending filaments to the arm at whose base it lies; the sense of touch is very acute. According to Sars, Steen- strup, and Lutken, there is not only in this class a great power of regeneration of lost parts, but a spontaneous division of the disk itself, with regeneration of the necessary por- tions, several times repeated up to a certain age, for the multiplication of the individual. While this may sometimes be a simple divi- sion, in many it is the normal mode of multi- plication instead of gemmation. This form of agamic multiplication in ophiuroids and aste- rioids has been called schizogeny. On the upper surface, to one side of the centre and between two of the arms, is a round bright- colored spot, the madreporic plate or body, communicating with a canal leading to the water vessel around the mouth a supposed filter for water passing into the aquiferous system and through the body. They propa- gate usually by eggs, and the sexes are in sep- arate individuals ; the larvaB are at first oval, ciliated bodies, from which the radiated perfect animal is developed, at various stages of its growth, by a process of internal gemmation. The crinoid comatula, or feather star, free when adult, has its young attached on a long slender stem ; Sars has traced the growth of echinaster from a spheroidal free-moving mass to the perfect star fish. Some species secrete a reddish fluid on the surface, probably the col- oring matter, often irritating to the skin of persons handling them ; according to Deslong- champs, they can inject a fluid into the shells of their victims, which stupefies and renders them an easy prey. Rymer Jones says star fishes may be considered as mere walking stomachs, their office in the economy of nature being to