Bibliographical Notices. 95 



a common knowledge of grammar, and recklessness in the symmetry 

 of nomenclature." It is therefore not a little surprising to find no 

 less than fifteen of Mr. Miller's specific names commencing with a 

 capital letter. Perhaps he has discovered by this time that such 

 is the custom in certain serial publications when a proper name is 

 employed as the basis of a specific one. 



The first twenty-five pages of the joint work by Messrs. Miller 

 and Gurley, with four of the ten plates, were published in the 

 ' Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History ' for April 

 1890. These have since been reprinted and published in pamphlet 

 form, together with six more plates and tliirty-four additional pages 

 of text. Forty-nine new species of Crinoids are described, and 

 another is mentioned though as yet unnamed. Thirty of these 

 fifty are from the Keokuk Group of Indiana, eleven occur in the 

 Upper Coal Measures of Missouri, and nine in the Kinderhook 

 Group of Iowa. Time will show how far the authors are right in 

 regarding all these forms as new to science ; but the value of their 

 work is seriously diminished by the fact that more than half of their 

 specific descriptions are entirely unaccompanied by any words of 

 comparison with forms already known from the same horizons. 

 They vouchsafe a little more information about their new genera, 

 some of which seem dubious in the extreme. Thus, for example, it 

 is difiicult to see in what respects Ulocrinus diff'ers from Cromyo- 

 crinus, Trautschold, of which the authors seem to have never heard, 

 though it is redefined in the ' Revision of the Palreocrinoidea ' by 

 Wachsmuth and Springer, who refer to it two species from the 

 Kaskaskia Group of Illinois, together with one from the Coal 

 Measures, the horizon of the three new species referred to Ulo- 

 ■ crinus. 



^siocrinus, Miller and Gurley, seems to be indistinguishable 

 from Phialocrinus, Trautschold, which is also left unnoticed by 

 our authors, ^siocrimis has a dicyclic bowl-shaped calyx with 

 the posterior basal truncated for the reception of an anal plate, 

 and two costal plates (brachials, M. & G.) supporting simple arras. 

 All these characters were described by Trautschold in Fliialo- 

 crinus j)(it^ns so long ago as 1879, as Messrs. Miller and Gurley 

 ought to have known. I may say here that most, if not all, of the 

 American species referred to Oraphiocrhms by Wachsmuth and 

 Springer should be placed under Phialocrinus, with which they 

 agree in having the anal plate resting on a truncated basal, and so 

 separating two radials ; whereas in the type, and perhaps the only 

 species, of Graphiocrinus (G. encnnoides, de Koninck and Le Hon) 

 all the basals are alike and the anal plate rests on the upper edges 

 of two of the radials which form a closed ring *. Wachsmuth and 



* The species from the Coal Measures which White has described as 

 JErisocritius plamts (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. vol. ii. 1880, p. 257, pi. i. figs. 0, 

 7) may perhaps belong to Graphiocrinus, as described hj de Koninck. 

 On the other hand, when its arm-structure is known, it may prove to 

 have the same relation to this genus as Ceriocrinus Craiyii aud C. hemi- 

 aphcericus have to Phialocrinus. 



