MONOGRAPH OF THE EXISTING CRINOIDS. 5 



observations at sea I became convinced that the recent crinoids are in every way as 

 much of a factor in the present day marine biology, and play fully as important a 

 part, as the echinoids, the bolothurians, or the asteroids; (Ecologically they are more 

 interesting than any of these because of their sessile mode of life and curiously 

 specialized method of procuring food. 



I believe that the small importance hitherto attached to the crinoids as recent 

 animals in comparison with the other echinoderms has arisen from three causes: 

 (1) The extraordinary completeness of the palaeontological record; this has its 

 origin in the fact that the crinoids exceed almost all other animals in their adapt- 

 ability to f ossilization ; their organization includes a very largo percentage of lime 

 and other inorganic materials, and there are no soft bodied forms among them. It 

 is to be expected, then, that fossil crinoids will be exceedingly numerous, and will 

 include a far greater variety of diverse types than the fossil representatives of the 

 other echinoderm groups, and therefore will appear great ly to have exceeded in the 

 past in numbers, variety, and general importance the echinoids, asteroids, ophiu- 

 roids or holothurians; while at the same time this splendid palseontological record 

 will tend to blind one to the true importance of the recent representatives and 

 to cause them to appear, in comparison with the recent representatives of the 

 other classes, relatively insignificant; (2) the small number of species hitherto 

 known; tho majority of the specimens collected have slipped unheralded into 

 museums; very few investigators have cared to cope with the many difficulties 

 presented by their study, and so the proportionate number of known forms has 

 been allowed to fall far behind those known in the other groups, not because they 

 are really so very much fewer, but because of the much less general interest which 

 they have excited; were the crinoids as enthusiastically studied as the echinoids, 

 ophiuroids, asteroids or holothurians, we should have a wealth of records and of 

 described forms comparing far more favorably with what we find on consulting the 

 literature on those animals; (3) the paucity or absence of accessible species along 

 the shores of the countries where the greatest interest in zoology is taken; one 

 can not expect that a young investigator will devote himself with enthusiasm to 

 the study of a group represented on his shores by one more or less rare or local 

 species as in Europe, or by none at all which are accessible to him as in America, 

 when the representatives of other groups are rich both in number and in species; 

 were the shores of Europe or America as well stocked with littoral crinoids as are 

 those of Borneo or Celebes, I have no doubt that our knowledge of the crinoids 

 would be far in advance of what it is to-day; the semiprofessional zoologist as a 

 rule pursues in foreign lands mainly animals in which he has become interested at 

 home through the study of his own local fauna; animals of classes strange to him, 

 especially if difficult to preserve, are of only incidental interest; therefore ho gen- 

 erally, if ho has a loaning toward marine zoology, gathers up corals, shells, urchins 

 or starfish, together with the more tenacious ophiuroids, not attempting to save 

 the more brittle species of the latter or the very brittle crinoids. 



Firmly believing, therefore, that the recent crinoids are in no way less important 

 than the recent representatives of the echinoids, asteroids, ophiuroids or holothu- 

 rians, and in spite of then- remarkably complete pala?ontologicul record, I have thought 



