apart; the oyster, with all its strength, tries to keep them shut. It is
stronger than its enemy, and yet the steady pull of hundreds of suckers
is more than it can stand, and the shells, after a time, begin to gape a
little.

Now a strange thing happens. The mouth of the Starfish opens into a kind
of bag which slips between the oyster shells. The Starfish, as it were,
turns itself inside-out! It then eats the oyster and leaves the clean
shell.

Mussels are smaller, so they are eaten in a different way. The Starfish
merely presses the mussel into its mouth, cleans out the shells, and
throws them away. Were we not right to call this wonderful mouth the
mouth of an ogre?

Oysters, as you know, are so valuable that we rear them in special
"beds." Along comes the hungry Starfish, with thousands of its
relations, finding the fat oysters very good eating. They do great
damage in our oyster-fisheries, and it is one long battle between them
and the keepers of the "beds."

Supporting the tough skin of Five-fingered Jack is a wonderful skeleton.
It is like a network of fine plates and rods made of lime. Perhaps you
have seen one in a museum.

Five-fingers has a great number of cousins, some of them common enough
along our shores. One of the strangest is the Brittle Star. On first
seeing one of these animals I tried to capture it by holding its long,
wriggling arms. At once the arms broke off. Then I tried to scoop the
creature out of its watery home. But it began to break its "rays" off as