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Updated: July 10, 2025
The very earliest existing fossils would lead us to believe what is otherwise quite probable, that life on our planet began with very small forms that it passed at first through a baby stage. The animals of the Cambrian period are almost all small mollusks, star-fishes, sponges, and other simple, primitive types of life.
We have also the sub-kingdom of shell-fish or molluscs, including cuttle-fishes, snails, whelks, limpets, the oyster, and a multitude of allied forms. A multitudinous sub-kingdom of worms also exists, as well as another of star-fishes and their congeners.
Agassiz infers from his own researches and those of Mr. Muller, that both in star-fishes and sea-urchins the pedicellariae must undoubtedly be looked at as modified spines.
It therefore seems to be hardly doubtful that these wonderful creatures live and die at the depths in which they are found. Dr. Wallich ascertained that the sea-bottom at this point consisted of the ordinary Globigerina ooze, and that the stomachs of the star-fishes were full of Globigerinoe.
Parental affection, or some feeling which replaces it, has been developed in certain animals extremely low in the scale, for example, in star-fishes and spiders. It is also occasionally present in a few members alone in a whole group of animals, as in the genus Forficula, or earwigs. The all-important emotion of sympathy is distinct from that of love.
The group of Quadrupeds was not the only defective one in this classification of Linnæus; his class of Worms, also, was most heterogeneous, for he included among them Shell-Fishes, Slugs, Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins, and other animals that bear no relation whatever to the class of Worms.
One evening through its means, in addition to plenty of fish, no less than five kinds of star-fishes and twelve of crustacea, several of which are quite new, were brought ashore. Among the plants of the island the most important is a wild species of plantain or banana, afterwards found to range along the north-east coast and its islands, as far as Cape York.
There are displayed tiny caves and grottoes of white coral, star-fishes, sea-urchins, growing sponges, sea-fans, and bright-colored fishes, including the hummingbird fish, and others like butterflies with mottled fins and scales, together with that little oddity, the rainbow-fish.
With these a star-fish can crawl about, or even turn himself over if he wishes to, and if he is disturbed or frightened these little feelers shrink up and conceal themselves in tiny holes in the rays. Some star-fishes have the power of breaking off their rays, and, like the crab and lobster, can grow new ones to take their place.
Leuckart proposed to subdivide the Radiates into two groups: the Coelenterata, including Polyps and Acalephs or Jelly-Fishes, and Echinoderms, including Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins, and Holothurians.
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