A444 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. (CHAP. 1x. 
mud, took about twenty specimens of a handsome 
Pentacrinus involved in the ‘hempen tangles ;’ and 
this splendid addition to the fauna of the European 
seas my friend has done me the honour to associate 
with my name. 
Pentacrinus wyville-thomsoni, JEFFREYS (Fig. 71), 
is intermediate in some of its characters between P. 
asteria and P. miilleri ; it approaches the latter species, 
however, the more nearly. In a mature specimen the 
stem is about 120 mm. in length, and consists of five 
or six internodes. The whorls of cirri towards the 
lower part of the stem are 40 mm. apart, and the in- 
ternodes contain from thirty to thirty-five joints. 
The cirri are rather short and stand straight out from 
the nodal joint, or curve shortly downwards, as in 
P. asteria. ‘The nodal joint is single, and the syzygy 
separates it from the joint immediately beneath it, 
which does not differ materially from the ordinary 
internodal stem-joint. All the stems of mature 
examples of this species end uniformly in a nodal 
joint, surrounded with its whorl of cirri, which curve 
downwards into a kind of grappling root. The lower 
surface of the terminal joint is in all smoothed and 
rounded, evidently by absorption, showing that the 
animal had for long been free. This character I 
have remarked as occurring in some specimens of 
P. millerit. UT have no doubt that it is constant in 
the present species, and that the animal lives loosely 
rooted in the soft mud, and can change its place at 
pleasure by swimming with its pinnated arms; that 
it is in fact intermediate in this respect between 
the free genus Antedon and the permanently fixed 
crinoids. 
