STAR-STONE, in natural history, a name given to certain extraneous fossil stones, in form of short and commonly somewhat crooked, columns, composed of several joints; each resembling the figure of a radiated star, with a greater or smaller number of rays in the different species: they are usually found of about an inch in length, and of the thickness of a goose-quill. Some of them have five angles, or rays, and others only four, and in some the angles are equi-distant, while in others they are irregularly so; in some also they are short and blunt, while in others they are long, narrow, and pointed; and some have their angles so very short and obtuse, that at first sight they might be taken for entrochoasterine. The several joints in the same specimen are usually all of the same thickness; this however is not always the case, but in some they are larger at one end, and in others at the middle, than in any other part of the body; and some species have one of the
rays bifid; so as to emulate the appearance of a fix-rayed kind.