The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 273: CHAP. 86. (60.)—SEA-STARS.

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About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 86. (60.)—SEA-STARS.

In addition to what I have already stated, I find that authors, distinguished for their wisdom, express surprise at finding a star in the sea—for such, in fact, is the form of the animal, which has but very little flesh 2845 within, and nothing but a hard skin without. It is said that in this fish there is such a fiery heat, that it scorches everything it meets with in the sea, and instantaneously digests its food. By what experiments 2846 all this came to be known, I cannot so easily say; but I am about to make mention of one fact which is more remarkable still, and which we have the opportunity of testing by every day’s experience.