Morphology of the Blastoidea. 279 



So far was I from disputing the general accuracy of his 

 observations, that I spoke of being " able to give a general 

 confirmation to his results ; " of being " inclined to think that 

 he is right;" of one of his figures being "in some points 

 more correct than any which has yet been published ; " of his 

 "valuable observations," &c. It will be seen therefore that 

 the points in which we differ are not so much facts of obser- 

 vation, as the interpretation of those facts and the inferences 

 which we have respectively drawn from them. In many 

 cases, if Mr. Hambach will pardon me for saying so, his 

 style is so involved and his terminology so loosely applied 

 that his meaning is not a little obscure * ; and though 

 the subject is not unfamiliar to me, I have frequently 

 had considerable difficulty in understanding his descriptions. 

 The consequence has been that in one case, when I put my 

 difficulty into the form of a question and asked for informa- 

 tion, the answer has been a charge of trying to misrepresent 

 his statements. 



With all due deference to Mr. Hambach, I must sjill 

 decline to believe in the existence of the zigzag plated 

 integument, which he describes as covering the whole ambu- 

 lacral field, and as " probably of an elastic nature during the 

 lifetime of the animal " f. What I said in 1881 1 say 

 again, viz. that the supposed integument is nothing but a 

 surface-marking of the calcareous plates. According to 

 Mr. Hambach J, however, " Likewise is the zigzag plated 

 integument preserved which covers the ambulacral field, 

 incredible as this may seem to Mr. Carpenter, whose incre- 

 dulity, however, is no evidence to the contrary The 



ambulacral field which is marked e in Iiomer's fig. 2 on pi. I. 

 of his ' Monographic der Blastoideen ' indicates the existence 

 of a layer or integument covering the same (although not 

 described as such). The sutures, or at least the longitudi- 

 nal sutures between lancet and ibral pieces (sic) would be 

 visible if it was only a surface ornamentation of the calcareous 

 shell, as supposed by Mr. Carpenter." 



I can see nothing in this figure of Iiomer's to justify the 

 inference which Mr. Hambach draws from it. The ambu- 

 lacral field is crossed by a series of parallel lines which are 

 the expression of the transverse ridges and furrows on the 

 surface of the lancet piece. The ridges correspond in position 

 with the pore-plates at its edge, and the intervening furrows 

 with the sutures between the pore-plates. This was well 



* The reader will be able to judge of this for himself from the various 

 extracts from Mr. Hambach's writings which are quoted further on. 

 t Trans. St. Louis Acad. vol. iv. p. 150. 

 X Ibid. p. 530. 



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