Rising in the zoölogical scale to starfishes and sea-urchins, I can only say that the starfishes interest oystermen because they prey upon their oysters, and the former often do enormous damage to planted beds, especially in Long Island Sound. In the old days it was thought that medicines made out of the “stars” and the “sea-eggs” were very potent in certain diseases. The trepang—some one of several sorts of holothurian, an elongated creature related to the starfish, and covered with a prickly, leathery hide, so that it looks like a sort of sea-cucumber—which is dried and eaten by the Chinese and Malayans, belongs here too; considerable quantities of these queer food-creatures are gathered by the Chinese along the coasts of Mexico, Southern California and the outlying islands, and are sold in San Francisco mainly for export to Asia. The sea-urchin itself is eagerly sought as food by the Indians of the American northwest coast. Coming to crustaceans—do we not eat crabs gladly, from the “shedder” to the huge lobster? On the coast of Maine whole villages of sea-side people get their support almost wholly by catching lobsters and canning them to send abroad. In Virginia and North Carolina, at certain seasons, hundreds of men are engaged in catching and shipping crabs for market, and in Louisiana large factories are devoted to canning shrimps, which are also extensively used as food in the Old World, where they are cooked by parching or boiling, and sold by peddlers in the streets. This brings us to the mollusks, in our glance at the useful animals of the ocean; and to prove _their_ importance, it is enough to remind the reader that these include the “shell-fish” of our coasts—the oyster, clam, mussel, scallop, cockle, and all the rest—not a few! I found by my long study of the subject, when, in 1879 and 1880, I was gathering statistics of the United States shell-fisheries for the United States Fish Commission and the Tenth Census, that at that time there were taken from our waters, of oysters alone, almost 23,000,000 bushels each year, worth to the oystermen about $13,500,000. During the twenty years that have elapsed since that investigation—the figures of which you may obtain in full in my Report to the Tenth Census upon the Oyster Industries—these amounts have largely increased. This business employs over 100,000 persons in this country alone; and oysters, clams, and other shell-fish are gathered all round the globe, forming one of the most important of all natural supplies of food. In the most thickly populated parts of the world the natural supply of oysters long ago ceased to suffice for the demand, and artificial propagation and cultivation were resorted to and now prevail on both sides of the North Atlantic, and to a less degree elsewhere. [Illustration: STARFISHES AT HOME. This is the common eastern American form (_Asterias vulgaris_) upper and under views.]