V. 



DEAD SEA-LILIES. 



1 Here, too, were living flowers, 

 Which, like a bud compacted, 

 Their purple cups contracted ; 

 And now in open blossom spread, 

 Stretch'd, like green anthers, many a seeking head. 

 And arborets of jointed stone were there." 



SOUTHEY. 



NY one looking at an encrinite for the 

 first time would probably suspect that 

 it was the remains of a dead flower. 

 And when it was alive it was still more 

 like a plant. But it is an animal, or rather a 

 colony of animals. And though lying here in be- 

 tween the layers of a Silurian slab, or flattened out 

 on a slice of Liassic shale, dead enough, and only 

 the skeleton of its former self, it is sufficiently 

 beautiful to justify us in calling it a dead Sea-lily. 



Crinoids, the fossils of which are usually called 

 Encrinites, belong to the sub-kingdom of Echino- 

 dermata, or spiny-skinned animals, which at one 

 time Professor Huxley included with the lower 

 worms (Scolecida) in the proposed sub-kingdom 

 Annuloida or ring-like animals. 



