ELABORATE STRUCTURE OF FOSSIL ENCRINITES. 173 



Each of these individual pieces, observes Dr. Buck- 

 land, presents a similar series of articulations, varying 

 in minute particulars as we ascend upwards through 

 the body of the animal, so that every joint is exactly 

 adjusted to give the requisite amount of flexibility 

 and strength. From one extremity of the series to 

 the other, and throughout all the rays and pinnules 

 of the flower-like head, the surface of each joint arti- 

 culates with that adjacent to it with the most perfect 

 regularity and nicety of adjustment. So exact and 

 methodical is this arrangement, even to the extremity 

 of the minutest tentacula, that it is just as improbable 

 that the metals which compose the wheels of a chro- 

 nometer should for themselves have calculated and 

 arranged the form and number of the teeth of each 

 respective wheel, and that these wheels should have 

 placed themselves in the precise position fitted to 

 attain the end resulting from the combined action of 

 them all, as for the successive hundreds and thousands 

 of little pieces that compose an Encrinite to have 

 arranged themselves in a position subservient to the 

 end produced by the combined effect of their united 

 mechanism ; each acting its peculiar part in har- 

 monious subordination to the rest, and all conjointly 

 producing a result which no single series of them, 

 acting separately, could possibly have effected. 



The physiological history of the family of En- 

 crinites is very important : their species were nume- 

 rous among the most ancient orders of created beings, 

 and in this early state their construction exhibits at 

 least an equal, if not a higher degree of perfection, 

 than is retained in the existing Pentacrinites ; and 



