36 UINTACRINUS: ITS STRUCTURE AND RELATIONS. 



carried we cannot tell. We may speculate, and I have no fault to find 

 with those who do so, for speculation not unfrequently opens up the road 

 to discovery. 



Mr. Bather * has criticised the Monograph of the Crinoidea Camerata, 

 because its authors did not, in his opinion, construct a classification on 

 phylogenetic principles; and in his larger review! we are treated to some 

 good-natured banter for our "uninteresting prudence" in refraining from 

 the cultivation of genealogical trees. We are told tliat an author should 

 " have the courage of his convictions," and that the " downfall of so many 

 phylogenetic erections is due to the fact that they are built with their foun- 

 dations in the air." And in Lankester's Zoology, Part III., p. 141, he says 

 that " Wachsmnth and Springer's system, though far the best from an 

 anatomical standpoint, is not the classification sought by the modern 

 biologist." 



There is no doubt that each author who undertakes to express his ideas 

 of descent in a new scheme of classification does so in the belief that his 

 own structure is a substantial pyramid, whose base is firmly established 

 upon the ruins of the top-heavy contrivances of his predecessors. With 

 regard to the Crinoids, there have appeared, since our Monograph of the 

 Camerata, two elaborate classifications, each avowedly based upon phylo- 

 genetic principles, viz. : that of Mr. Bather, already mentioned, and one by 

 Dr. Jaekel, whose general researches and great works upon the Crinoids 

 of Germany constitute a rich contribution to science. The views of the 

 latter author are to be developed in full detail in his magnificent '' Stam- 

 nie.sgeschichte der Pelmatozoen," the first part of which, embracing the 

 Thecoidea and Cystoidea, has just been published. He, likewise,^ finds fault 

 with Wachsmuth and Springer, because, in his opinion, they have dealt 

 with the morphological conditions as they found them too much from 

 an anatomical standpoint, and have not sufficiently taken into account 

 the import of the modifications due to descent. He finds in the changes 

 in the systematic arrangement of the Crinoids made by Wachsmuth and 

 Springer in their successive writings, proof that the right road to the 

 solution of the great questions of classification had not yet been found. 



We have, therefore, two new and almost simultaneous phylogenetic 



* Natural Science, May, ]808, p. 3-15. f Oeol. Mag., Decade IV., March, 1899, p. 123. 



I Nenes Jahrb. f. Mm., 1899, Vol. I. p. 380. SitzuugsbericLte Ges. Naturf. Ereimde zu Berlin, 

 1894, p. 102. 



