1898] PENTACRINUS : A NAME AND ITS HISTORY 251 



marin, was not congeneric therewith. Blumenbach was well aware 

 that, as he said in 1790, " llienier's Medusa-palm (Ilcbnintholithus 

 portentostis Linn.) has long had the claim to the name Pentacrinit." 



People in those days did not attach such importance to names, 

 priority, and preliminary notices ; but even so it is rather sur})rising 

 that the name Pentacrinite was not used in a regular Latin form and 

 in accordance with the binominal system until 1804. In that year 

 was published Heft 7 of JUumenlmch's " Abbildungen naturhis- 

 torischer Gegenstande," a work that rigidly employs the Linnaean 

 system of nomenclature. No. 70 of this is the description and 

 figure of a " Medusenpalme " from Dorsetshire, under the name Pcnta- 

 crinites fossilis; as such it is distinguished from Encrinitesfossilis, ^rst 

 named in the preceding Heft (1802), as well as from the species 

 common at Boll in Wiirtemberg. This then, a well-known repre- 

 sentative of our form B, is the type-species of the genus Pentacrinus. 



As to the difference of termination, it is perfectly clear that 

 the early writers made no real distinction between Eticrinus and 

 ETicrinites, Pentacrinus and Pentacrinites. The termination ites was 

 generally applied to the organism when in a fossil state, but was 

 not held to indicate generic distinction. It is often confused with 

 lites, and said to be a corruption of Xldog, a stone ; but this is an 

 etymology invented afterwards, like Schroeter's derivation of 

 Encrinos. It is merely the Greek suffix — Irri;, meaning " of the 

 nature of." It has never been maintained that the chance addition 

 of this suffix constituted a difference of name, and all modern writers 

 on Crinoidea have merely dropped it as out of harmony with modern 

 views as to the nature of fossils. 



Now, if most early writers drew a correct distinction between 

 Pentacrinus and the Palmier marin, liow, it may be asked, has the 

 name become restricted to the genus (C) of which the Palmier marin 

 is the chief living representative ? There may have been one or two 

 writers who, as Oken (1815), referred Isis asteria to Pentacrinus ; but 

 it was not till J. S. Miller published his " Natural History of the 

 Crinoidea" (1821), that this view became at all general. In his 

 " Pentacrinites vel Pentacrinus" Miller included P. caput-medusae 

 (= Isis asteria, Linn., Encrinus caput-medusae, Lamarck), P. hriareus 

 (= P. fossilis, Blumenb.), P. suhangularis (? = Gajput-medusae, 

 Hiemer, Helmintholithus portcntosus, Linn.), P. hasaltiformis, and P. 

 tuberculatus. The last two and the first one belong to type C, the 

 others to type B. It was the authority of J. S. Miller, whose fame 

 is indeed well-deserved, that led subsequent writers to follow his 

 example ; and the name Pentacrinus caput-medusae, though incorrect 

 in both its parts, was further fixed in the minds of zoologists by 

 the classical memoir of Johannes Miiller, " Ueber den Bau des Pen- 

 tacrinus caput-medusae" (1843). 



