THE OYSTER AND THE STAR-FISH.
THE Rev. J. G. Wood says: "No-one would have thought, on placing an oyster and a five-finger side by side, that the star-fish is a relentless foe to the oyster. Those who can remember their first fruitless endeavors to open an oyster may naturally wonder how the star-fish can achieve such a feat. As I have repeatedly seen, it proceeds as follows: Clasping the oyster in its rays, it brings its mouth opposite the hinge. From the mouth it pours a secretion that paralyzes the hinge muscle, and causes the shell to open. It cannot, like a dog-whelk, extract its prey and put it into its stomach, so it reverses the process, and puts its stomach into, or rather over, the oyster, protruding the stomach from its mouth, surrounding the oyster with its coats, digesting it, and then withdrawing the stomach into its body. The wildest fancy of Oriental legends never equaled in grotesque imagination this perfectly true history of the oyster and the star-fish."