. Harper's young people . in a warm oven to dry. Our common star-fish has five hollow rays or arms, ex-tending from the centre like a star. If any of these rays arebroken off, others grow in their places. It is a singularfact that these animals can break themselves to pieces, orthrow off their rays, when they become alarmed. A gen-tleman who was not familiar with this odd habit of thestar-fish was once strolling on the beach, and carrying-carelessly a fine large specimen by one of its rays. Sud-denly the inanimate-looking creature threw off one of thelower rays. The look of dismay with which t
. Harper's young people . in a warm oven to dry. Our common star-fish has five hollow rays or arms, ex-tending from the centre like a star. If any of these rays arebroken off, others grow in their places. It is a singularfact that these animals can break themselves to pieces, orthrow off their rays, when they become alarmed. A gen-tleman who was not familiar with this odd habit of thestar-fish was once strolling on the beach, and carrying-carelessly a fine large specimen by one of its rays. Sud-denly the inanimate-looking creature threw off one of thelower rays. The look of dismay with which the gentle-man dropped the star-fish when he found it was breakingitself to pieces was highly amusing. In this case thestar-fish accomplished nothing but its own partial destruc-tion, whereas if it had broken off the ray by which itwas held, there might have been some hope of escape forthe remainder of its body. Star-fish glide along smoothly, and without apparenteffort. They bend their bodies into various shapes to fit -;. Fig. 1.—UNDER SIDE op RAT. the inequalities of the surface over which they creep, andin order to do this they require a movable skeleton. Seehow beautifully nature has provided for this necessity byforming the skeleton of thin limestone plates, so joined asto admit of slight motion. These plates are representediu Fig. 1, which is the under sideof a ray, and the endhaving been broken off, we can see the two hollow tubeswhich it contains. Look now at the upper side of your star-fish. Fig. 3, andnotice the knobs and short spines with which it is covered.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1879
