1. THE FIVE-FINGERED STARFISH.2. THE BIRD’S-FOOT STARFISH.
A very strange fact about the starfish is that if one of its rays is cut off, a new one very soon grows in its place. Stranger still, if one of these creatures is cut in two, each half begins to throw out new rays, and in a few weeks’ time there are two starfishes instead of only one! That seems impossible; doesn’t it? But yet it is perfectly true.
And another very curious fact about starfishes is that they keep their eyes in very odd places—at the very tips of the rays. And in some starfishes these eyes are furnished with lids, which can be opened and shut!
PLATE XXXV
THE BIRD’S-FOOT STARFISH (2)
This is a very curious starfish, and a very handsome one as well. It is curious, because its five rays are all joined together by membrane, very much like the toes on a duck’s foot. That is why it is called the “bird’s-foot” starfish. And it is handsome, because it has a scarlet centre, a scarlet line all round the margin, and another one down the inner margin of each ray, all the rest of the body being bright orange.
The bird’s-foot starfish is not very often seen, for it lives some little way below low-water mark. But sometimes, when there has been a violent storm at a season of spring-tide—and you will remember that spring-tides come whenever there is a new moon or a full moon—it is flung upon the beach by the retreating waves, and you may find it lying on the sand when the tide is out.