178 HERAPATH, ON THE 
lividus, two varieties, and neglectus (Forbes), have furnished 
numerous illustrations, and an Echinus from the Mediter- 
ranean has also been examined, the pedicellarie of which 
were so closely analogous in form to those of the British 
neglectus that the author was fully prepared to find that a 
comparison of its other characters with those of that species 
would confirm their identity, and it subsequently did so, 
without any possible doubt, an instance which may be con- 
sidered the strongest possible proof of the truth of the 
proposition ‘that the forms of the pedicellariz are peculiar 
to the species.” 
The pedicellariz of some Echimoderms (more especially 
Uraster rubens, Echinus sphera, and Amphidetus communis) 
have been partially described and incorrectly figured by various 
observers—Miiller, Sars, Munro, Oken, and Sharpey. 
Miller appears first to have given them the name by which 
they have been hitherto known, and he conceived them to be 
parasitic animals, which opinion Lamarck, Cuvier, and 
Schweigger, more or less adopted, but Munro, Oken, and 
Sharpey, regarded them as organs of the animal of whose 
purpose and function we as yet know nothing. It appears to 
be generally established as a fact that the pedicellariz con- 
tinue their movements even hours after the animal has been 
crushed to pieces, and, to all appearance, dead; yet such ap- 
parently independent movements, cannot be satisfactorily 
adduced at the present day as evidence of mdividual vitality, 
as the existence of such involuntary motions in the lower 
animals depending on muscular irritability and reflex excito- 
motory actions are well known to all physiologists, whilst 
even the leg of a man has been observed to move vigorously 
some time after amputation. In describing the Echinoder- 
mata Professor Forbes frequently employs the word spinules 
as asynonym for that of pedicellariz, but this alteration is, 
without doubt, an innovation which does not recommend itself 
for general adoption, as many Echinodermata wholly destitute 
of pedicellariz possess little spines which are totally differ- 
ent in form from those minute organs which we are now 
engaged in investigating. And although the name pedicel- 
lariz involves an undoubted misconception of the true func- 
tion of the little pincer-shaped organs described, yet it is far 
preferable to retain this term, with a mental reservation that 
we now know them to be no parasites, than to use a term 
bearing such a wide signification as spinules, and so inadequate 
to the comprehension of the bodies really meant by the term. 
All pedicellarie agree in having a calcareous framework 
of great beauty, consisting of several pieces united together, 
