12 



CRIN01DE.E. 



Pmtacrinus. The discovery excited great interest both 

 at home and abroad ; for it was the first animal of 

 the Encrinite kind which had been seen in the seas of 

 Europe, and the first recent Encrinite which had ever 

 been examined by a competent observer in a living 

 state. The base of its column, which was flexible and 

 bent, and twisted itself at the will of the animal, was 

 expanded into a convex calcareous plate, by which it 

 attached itself to foreign bodies. From the centre of 

 the plate arose the column, built up of about twenty- 

 four joints, and somewhat thicker towards its upper 

 extremity than at the lower. Round its uppermost 

 joints, springing from the base of its cup-like body, was 

 a row of jointed filaments with hooked extremities. 

 The body bore five bifurcating arms, each bifurcation 

 consisting of about twenty-four joints, in the older 

 specimens pinnated, in the younger simple. Along the 

 sides of each arm were rows of dark spots, and from 

 the membrane of the arms proceeded fleshy flexible ten- 

 tacula. The body resembled that of Comatula in its 

 structure, having a separate mouth and proboscidiform 

 lateral anus. The youngest specimens found had neither 

 column nor arms, but appeared like little clubs fixed by a 

 spreading base, and sending out from their summits a few 

 pellucid tentacula. Dr. Fleming first proposed the generic 

 separation of this animal from Pentacrhms, and suggested 

 the propriety of associating it with Comatula by an im- 

 proved definition of the family Comatulidce. M. de Blain- 

 ville afterwards constituted for its reception the genus 

 Phytocrinus, and associated it with the Encrinites. But 

 in 1836, Mr. J. V. Thompson published a second memoir 

 on the subject in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Jour- 

 nal, communicating the results of further researches. In 



