﻿260 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



in any Pelmatozoa. The breeding organs of the living crinoids are 

 located in the pinnules. The fertilized eggs are scattered in the 

 water singly or in bunches and become attached by means of a 

 glutinous substance to other objects. There is nothing in their 

 known habits to suggest any gathering of the progeny of an in- 

 dividual about it like a brood. The Comatulse, when developed, 

 swim in schools, and the crinoids generally are no doubt gregarious. 



" I cannot see that they are calyxes, of Cystids or anything else. 

 Hall's idea that they may have served as an anchor or float, remotely 

 comparable to the anchor of Ancyrocrinus, seems to me about the 

 most plausible of anything yet suggested. I do not believe they were 

 expansible, but think they must have been firm growths. The con- 

 dition of preservation indicates that, for if pliant or expansible we 

 should find them generally collapsed and flattened in the fossil state." 



Another collection was sent to Professor Jaekel, Berlin, who, under 

 date of March 10, 1904, comments as follows: 



" Hearty thanks for your sending of Camarocrinus which of course 

 are very much like those of Bohemia. As both belong to very differ- 

 ent horizons I am all the more convinced that they are bladder-like 

 developments of roots. These at all times had an indifferent char- 

 acter and under similar local conditions did develop similar forms at 

 very diverse places in the Pelmatozoa." 



Mode of Occurrence of Camarocrinus in the Rocks 



West Virginia. — In the ballast quarries of the B. & O. R. R. near 

 Keyser, West Virginia, Camarocrinus occurs in considerable numbers 

 in the shaly partings between thick beds of a compact, dark-blue lime- 

 stone, near the middle of the Manlius formation. As the quarry- 

 men do not care for dimension stone, and as the strata stand nearly 

 vertically, they drill holes as deep as 15 feet for dynamite charges 

 and throw down with one blast hundreds of tons of rock. On one of 

 these occasions, in the summer of 1901, the writer examined the 

 upper side of a slab of limestone many square yards in extent, and 

 saw on it, partially buried in the rock, at least 10 Camarocrinus, 

 nearly all of which presented their upper or unstalked end; appar- 

 ently not more than two of the ten specimens had the stalked end 

 uppermost. On this great slab there was not a trace of other fossils, 

 no1 even a segment of the column of an echinoderm. This fact led at 

 once to the hypothesis that Camarocrinus had no long stalk, and also 

 that it did not represent the root end of a crinoid. Four good col- 

 lectors, as well as the quarry foreman, have watched this layer at 

 sundry times during the last three years, and, while hundreds of 



