170 THE HISTORY OF CREATION, 
Besides the reasons mentioned, there are many other facts 
(principally from the comparative anatomy of Echinoderma) 
which most distinctly prove the correctness of my hypothesis. 
I established this hypothesis in 1866, without having any 
idea that fossil articulated worms still existed, apparently 
answering to the hypothetical primary forms. Such have 
in the mean time, however, really been discovered. In 
a treatise “On the Equivalent of the North American 
Taconic Schist in Germany,’* Geinitz and Liebe, in 1867, — 
have described a number of articulated Silurian worms, 
which completely confirm my suppositions. Numbers of 
these very remarkable worms are found in an excel- 
lent state of preservation in the slates of Wiirzbach, in the 
upper districts of Reusz. They are of the same structure 
as the articulated arm of a Star-fish, and evidently possessed 
a hard coat of mail, a much denser, more solid cutaneous 
skeleton than other worms in general. The number of 
body-segments, or metamera, is very considerable, so that 
the worms, although no more than a quarter or half an 
inch in breadth, attained a length of from two to three feet. 
The excellently preserved impressions, especially those of 
the Phyllodocites thuringiacus and Crossopodia Henrici, are 
so like the arms of many Star-fish (Colastra) that their 
true blood relationship seems very probable. This prime- 
val group of worms, which are most probably the ancestors 
of Star-fish, I call Mailed worms (Phracthelminthes, p. 150.) 
The three other classes of Echinoderma evidently arose 
at a later period out of the class of Sea-stars which have 
most faithfully retained the original form of the stellate 
* “Ueber ein Aequivalent der takonischen Schiefer Nordamerikas in 
Deutschland.” 
