Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/297

242, close to the body; and perfectly clean, without laceration, and without any perceptible flow of liquid.

I carefully slit up with scissors one of the separated rays, and found within it the bulbs of the numerous suckers, of course, and the two cæca of the intestine, beautifully arborescent, and of a yellowish-olive colour; so that in the voluntary throwing off of a limb, these digestive organs are not absorbed or contracted into the body, but cast off also.

The Starfish continued to walk about, like a Chelsea pensioner, on his one leg, till the afternoon of this second day, when the remaining limb dropped off by its own weight, on my lifting the animal from one vessel to another. I took great care of the body, hoping that it might reproduce the lost limbs while in my possession; but I was disappointed. It never moved after this last amputation, and putrefaction soon made it too manifest that death had ensued.

The Holothuriæ, or Sea-Cucumbers, those members of the Class Echinodermata, which, to the locomotive suckers and other essential organs of the Starfishes and Sea-urchins, conjoin some peculiarities, such as the elongate form, and a circle of oral tentacula, which are considered to approximate them to the Worms (Annelida), or, perhaps more truly, to the Actiniæ,—usually commit suicide in a different manner. According to the concurrent testimony of observers, they frequently disgorge from the mouth, the stomach, intestines, and ovary, "leaving the body an empty sac;" and occasionally throwing off even the tentacles, the mouth, and the dental cylinder. But some species of these are said to "divide