120 MARINE ANIMALS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 



Mackerel. And that small one ('t is like) was kept either for its 

 preservation or for food to the greater ; but, being alive, it seems 

 most likely it was there lodged for safety, except it were acci- 

 dentally drawn within the net, together with that piece of fish 

 upon which it might be then feeding." The account concludes 

 by saying, " This Fisherman could not tell me of any name it 

 hath, and 't is in all likelihood yet nameless, being not commonly 

 known as other Fish are. But until a fitter English name be 

 found for it, why may it not be called (in regard of what hath 

 been before mentioned of it) a Basket-Fish, or a Net-Fish, or a 

 Purs-net-Fish ? " And so it remains to this day as the Governor 

 of Connecticut first christened it, the Basket-fish. 



CRINOIDS. 



The Crinoids are very scantily represented in the present crea- 

 tion. They had their day in the earlier geological epochs, when 

 for some time they remained the sole representatives of their class, 

 and were then so numerous that the class of Echinoderms, with 

 only one order, seemed as full and various as it now does with 

 five. The different forms they assumed in the successive geo- 

 logical periods are particularly instructive ; these older Crinoids 

 combined characters which foreshadowed the advent of the Ophi- 

 urans, the true Star-fishes, and the Sea-urchins ; and so promi- 

 nently were their prophetic characters developed, that mlany of 

 them are readily mistaken for Star-fishes or Sea-urchins. 



In later times the group of Crinoids has been gradually 

 dwindling in number and variety. Its present representatives 

 are the Pentacrinus of Porto Rico, attached throughout life to a 

 stem, and the Comatula, which has a stem only in the early 

 stages of its growth, but is free when adult. The Pentacrinus 

 bears the closer relation to the more ancient Crinoids (Fig. 152), 

 which were always supported on a stem, while it is only in more 



