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They, like others of their family, pulsate through the water, sweeping gracefully along, borne on currents of their own making. Passing to other inhabitants of the pools, we find starfish and sea-urchins everywhere abundant.
The long ledge had many inhabitants and Sammy was soon on very good terms with a couple of jolly sea-urchins, whose round, prickly bodies were half hidden in the little holes which they had bored in the rock. The sea-urchins made him acquainted with some relations of theirs, a family of star-fish living on a flat shelf of rock near by.
Being to a certain extent soldiers, their business was to kill something and they were compassing the destruction of their present enemy by drinking wine and eating not sea-urchins but cold boiled artichokes. He gave me some and begged me to make myself at home.
Pike appears to have visited the site but once, when, as there had been heavy rains, he could not reach the tombs. He is evidently more in his element when wading after sea-urchins. His observations on such races as coolies, Chinese and Malabar-men are all, however, to the purpose.
Bright and early the next morning Sammy bade farewell to his friends at the ledge, and in company with his guide started forth on his long journey to Coral-Land. All the Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins assembled to see him off, and wish him a safe and prosperous voyage. Even the Hermit peered cautiously out from his cave, and waved an adieu with one claw.
The subjects of his experiments have been various species of sea-urchins, but the principles discovered will doubtless be found to apply to most, or perhaps all, forms of vertebrate life as well. While these studies were under way another developmental problem was being attacked in a neighboring room of the laboratory by Professor Kitasato, of the University of Tokio, Japan.
Of the Echinoderms, the class of Radiates represented now by our Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins, we may gather any quantity, though the old fashioned forms are very different from the living ones.
I had no business worries, for I knew my salary was mounting up at Dawsons'. We would see a sail now and then, but nothing ever came near us. I amused myself, too, by decorating the island with designs worked in sea-urchins and fancy shells of various kinds.
Next, for the babies' heads, covered with prickles, instead of hair. They are sea-urchins, Amphidotus cordatus, which burrow by thousands in the sand. These are of that Spatangoid form, which you will often find fossil in the chalk, and which shepherd boys call snakes' heads. Gosse's observation, that
The seaweed floated backward and forward like waving green hair; fruits round as Indian figs hung in whitish clusters on the rocks; pearly flowers shone in the depths of the green waters, and among the mysterious growth star-fishes spread their colored points; sea-urchins formed balls like dark blots covered with spines; the hippocampi, those little "devil's horses," swam restlessly; and flashes of silver and purple, of tails and fins, passed swiftly among whirlpools and bubbles, dashing out of one cave to disappear into the mouth of another unfathomable mystery.
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