EXTINCT ANIMALS 



profusion. Many hundreds of extinct kinds 

 are known and they occur as far back as the 

 Cambrian rocks and are wonderfully varied and 

 abundant in the Silurian, Devonian and Car- 

 boniferous (Fig. 215). Some of the finest are 

 found in the Jurassic strata (Figs. 214 and 216). 



A very interesting discovery in regard to the 

 Encrinites was made by a celebrated English 

 naturalist, Vaughan Thompson, in 1836, who was 

 an army surgeon and quartered at Cork, where he 

 studied the marine animals of Queenstown har- 

 bour. He found out many new and important 

 things by watching the growth from the egg by 

 means of the microscope of barnacles, star- 

 fishes and sea-moss, which he kept alive in 

 small glass vessels. 



Vaughan Thompson first of all discovered in 

 the sea at Queenstown a minute Encrinite, not a 

 third of an inch long (Fig. 217), and to this he 

 gave the name Pentacrinus europceus. The large 

 one from the West Indies was at that time the 

 only other living Encrinite known, and was 

 called Pentacrinus asteria. 



This was a sufficiently astonishing discovery, 

 but more was to come. Vaughan Thompson 

 found in the next place that the body of his 



290 



