CARBONIFEROUS CRINOID '= FINGERS " OR ''BRANCHES." 59 



All the limestone is very full of fossils, some bands of it being 

 made up of scalps of Streptorhynchus crenistria, Phill., Crinoid 

 remains, or Producti, mostly Productus semireticulaius, Martin. 



The shale on the Crinoid shale bank evidently came from the 

 upper eight feet of the section, and, although Crinoid remains 

 much prevail, ic also contains small Corals, Producti, Spirifera 

 Urii, Flem., Chonetes j^olita, M'Coy, frequently ; and rarely, 

 small Conularias, tfec. 



I asked Mr. James Bennie, of the Geological Survey, who has 

 perhaps examined as much shale as any one, if he had ever found 

 any of these grasping " Crinoid fingers " or "branches." He re- 

 plied that he had not, but had often got the '' grasping feet " of 

 Crinoids. Of course, any person who has been in the habit of 

 examining fossiliferous shale — either Silurian or Carboniferous — 

 must be well acquainted with these " grasping feet," as Mr. 

 Bennie calls them. In our Scotch Carboniferous shales they are 

 always found in connection ivith very small, or 2^67'haps young 

 Crinoids, and are the processes by which the base of the column 

 was fixed to foreign bodies, generally fragments of shells, Crinoid 

 " stems," or Corals ; the large Scotch Carboniferous specimens 

 72ever shoicing rooting p)rocesses. This leads me to think — and I 

 have long held the opinion — that our large Carboniferous Crinoid 

 "stems," or "columns," were not attached h\ root-like processes, 

 or by a calcareous plaster, resembling that which fixes Corallina 

 officinalis, Linn., a calcareous seaweed, to stones; but y^QVQ free- 

 swimmers, like jelly-fish, the ^^ stem^' hanging down in the water, 

 and so preserving them in a vertical position. The base may have 

 been fleshy, and they may, of course, have been fixed after the 

 manner of an Anemone, and if so, we are not likely to find this 

 out. 



The great weight of the column is rather a2;ainst the floating; 

 theory, but still it is the most plausible I can think of. It is not 

 likely that the stems lay along the sea bottom, as in that case we 

 ought to find them oftener in considerable lengths ; but the fact 

 is they are nearly always got in short bits, often indeed broken 

 up into their ultimate joints; and had they lived prone on the 

 sea bottom, the stems ought to be curved near the base of the 

 calyx. The " branches " are often found to be curved close to the 

 stems. From this consideration, the upright theory of growth is 



