The _Uraster rubens_ is also popularly known as 'Five Fingers.' For ages past it has been subject to the bitter denunciation of fishermen and others, for the injury which it is said to inflict upon oysters. At one time, according to Bishop Spratt, the Admiralty Court laid penalties upon those engaged in the oyster-fishing who did not tread under their feet, or throw upon the shore, a fish they call a Five-Finger, resembling a spur-rowel, because that fish gets into the oysters when they gape, and sucks them out. Poets have also endeavoured to perpetuate the vulgar opinion:-- 'The prickly Star-fish creeps with fell deceit, To force the Oyster from his close retreat, Whose gaping lids their widened void display; The watchful Star thrusts in a pointed ray-- Of all its treasures robs the rifled case, And empty shells the sandy hillock grace.' Even yet the oyster fishermen at certain localities wreak all possible vengeance upon the 'submarine Dando's,' for their supposed gourmandizing propensities. I say _supposed_, for although so many naturalists have studied the question, it is not, up to the present time, satisfactorily settled. Some deny the alleged tendency altogether, while less sceptical observers are unable to understand the mode in which the Star-fish could injure an animal apparently so capable of self-defence as the oyster. According to certain authors, the Star-fish encircles the oyster with its five fingers, and by some clever process of suction destroys the unfortunate mollusc. Others, again, maintain that the first step of the attack is the injection of some marine chloroform between the shells of the oyster, and that during the insensibility that follows, the Star-fish effects an entrance. As this is an interesting subject, perhaps the reader would like to have the exact words which are used by two celebrated naturalists, one of whom attempts to vindicate the character of the Asteridæ, the other to blacken it. Sir John Dalyell--a high authority upon all matters of marine zoology--shrewdly remarks: 'I have not heard it suggested that the Star-fish possesses any kind of solvent compelling the bivalves to sunder. Neither can its hostility be very deadly to the larger univalves, from the distance to which they are enabled to retreat within their portable dwellings. Their general habits are, to force the shells of smaller bivalves asunder, and to devour the contents; they likewise consume the substance of ordinary fishes entire; nevertheless, as far as I am yet aware, their destruction of oysters is destitute of evidence. The Star-fish sometimes shows an eversion of stomach, or of some membrane of it. Whether this may be the means of affecting their prey, merits investigation.'