LESSON XXXIX.
A SEA-CHANGE.
The star-fish lay a great number of eggs. Let us see what happens to eggs of one kind. They are not dropped one by one into the water, or strung on threads like chains.
Water Babies.
Water Babies.
They stick to the under-side of the parent fish, which settles on the sand or rocks, resting on its back, and bends up its five rays, like a basket, to hold and protect the eggs.
You see that in this state the parent can neither walk nor eat. And although star-fish are both greedy and restless, when they have eggs to take care of, they patiently lie quiet for ten days, until the eggs hatch.
In those ten days the parent star-fish cannot eat nor move. But at the end of ten days, the eggs hatch out the larvæ, and they float away. Then the star-fish finds that its work is done, and it bends back and begins to walk, swim, and fish.
Many of the larvæ, when they first come from the egg, have no rays, and do not look one bit like star-fish. They look like wee specks of barrels, with little hairy hoops, and a plume of hairs on one end.
The larva can swim; the hairs help it through the water. Slowly it begins to change its shape and to lose its loop of hairs. All it wants is to swim and to grow. When no larger than a flaxseed it looks like the grown-up star-fish.
A most curious thing is the lily-star egg, which fastens upon a coral, or something firm and hard. Then it takes as fast hold as the barnacle on the rock.
It shoots up a stem, and on the top of the stemgrows a cup like a lily-bell. It does not look like a star-fish, but like a lovely lily. Fine plumes are waving from its cup.
Some kinds of star-fish have larvæ that take other shapes. I cannot tell you about them all. But only the feather-star grows fast to some object for the larval state. In that state they do not look at all like the parent. Finally, like the jelly-fish, they change their shape, get loose, and swim off to see the water-world. Then they are like their parents.
Now let us lookagain at our star-fish. The little things like tubes on the under-side are each one set in a grove. They are full of fluid, and each has a tiny sucker. The star-fish can move them. They not only serve for feet, but for hands, to catch, and hold, and kill his prey.
Most of the star-fish are dull and slow of motion. There is one kind which moves quickly. It is called the Snake’s-tail-Star, from the shape of the rays, which are long and thin.
There is one of these animals often found on the coast of the Southern states, which has all the space between the rays filled up with a hard, stony, or shell-like matter. So the shape of this animal is not like a star. It is like a flat box with five sides. There are some little loop-holes quite through this hard box. On the middle of the top is the pattern of a five-pointed star-fish, like a picture! It is not a star-fish, but an urchin.
In this Radiate, the disk spreads out, so as to include, or shut in, the rays. On the one hand, there are some star-fish that have the disk very small. They seem to be all rays and no disk.
People who have studied star-fish divide them into six families. I have told you about all but the fifth. The fifth family are of such a queer shape that they are called cucumbers—Sea-Cucumbers.The Chinese like to eat them, and ships are sent out to fish for them. They grow in the shallows, near the islands in tropic seas. We have some also on our coasts.