Sometimes you may find a very much larger and handsomer starfish lying upon the shore. It has twelve rays instead of five, and is often as much as eight or ten inches across. In fact, it looks very much like a big sunflower. Generally it is bright scarlet in colour, but just now and then one finds a sun starfish with a violet tinge; and sometimes, while the middle part of the body is vermilion red, the rays are pale rose-colour, or even pink.
THE SUN STARFISH.
Like most of the starfishes, this animal has a very curious way of protecting its eggs for some little time after they are laid. It heaps them all up together into a pile, and then bends its rays downwards in such a way that it stands upon their tips, looking just like a little table with twelve very stout legs! It turns itself into a sort of cage, in fact, with the eggs inside it, and so guards them carefully until they hatch.
PLATE XXXVII
THE BRITTLE STARFISH
The Brittle Starfish is certainly the very oddest of all odd creatures, for it not only grows new rays if the old ones should be torn off, but actually breaks itself into pieces if it is startled or alarmed! And it is such a timid animal that a slight touch, or even a shadow suddenly falling upon it, will alarm it! Then it gives a kind of shudder, and shatters itself into little bits, nothing being left but the central disc and a heap of fragments! However, it does not appear to suffer any pain, or to lose any blood, and the five wounds on the disc very quickly heal. Then after a few days five little buds begin to show themselves, which quickly grow into new rays, and in a few weeks’ time the brittle starfish is as perfect as ever!
So ready are these creatures to break themselves up, that it is most difficult to obtain a perfect brittle starfish for a museum.