Beside the Toxopneustes (Fig. 131) described above, we have another
Sea-urchin very common along our shores. Among children who live near
sandy beaches, they are well known as "sand-cakes" (Fig. 139), and
indeed they are so flat and round, that, when dried and deprived of
their bristles, they look not unlike a cake with a star-shaped figure
on its surface. (Fig. 139.) When first taken from the water they are
of a dark reddish brown color, and covered with small silky bristles.
The disk is so flat, being but very slightly convex on the upper side,
that one would certainly not associate it at first sight with the
common spherical Sea-urchin or Sea-egg, as the Toxopneustes is
sometimes called. But upon closer examination the delicate ambulacral
tubes or suckers may be seen projecting from along the line of the
ambulacra, as in the spherical Sea-urchin; and though these ambulacra
become expanded near the summit into gill-like appendages, forming a
sort of rosette in the centre of the disk, they are, nevertheless, the
same organs, only somewhat more complicated. When such a disk is dried
in the sun, and the bristles entirely removed, the lines of suture of
the plates composing it, and corresponding exactly to those of the
spherical Sea-urchin, may very readily be seen. (_a_ and _i_, Fig.
139.)
[Illustration: Fig. 140. Transverse section of Echinarachnius; _o_
mouth, _e_ _e_ ambulacra, _c_ _m_ ambulacral ramifications, _w_
_w_ interambulacra. (_Agassiz_.)]
This flat Sea-urchin or Echinarachnius, as it is called, belongs to a
group of Sea-urchins known as Clypeastroids (shield-like Sea-urchins).
In a section (Fig. 140) exposing the internal structure, one cannot
but be reminded by its general aspect of an Aurelia. Could one
solidify an Aurelia it would present much the same appearance; another
evidence that all the Radiates are built on one plan, their
differences being only so many modes of expressing the same structural
idea. The teeth or jaws in this flat Sea-urchin are not so complicated
as in the Toxopneustes, being simply flat pieces, arranged around the
mouth (_o_, Fig. 140), without the apparatus of muscular bands by
means of which the teeth are moved in the other genus. It is a curious
fact, considered in relation to the general radiate structure of these
animals, that the teeth, instead of moving up and down like the jaws
in Vertebrates, or from right to left like those of Articulates, move
concentrically, all converging towards the centre.
* * * * *
STAR-FISHES.
_Star-fish_. (_Astracanthion berylinus_ AG.)
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