LILY STONES, OR ST. CUTHBERT'S BEADS. 167 



thousands being brought up in a single haul, as if the 

 bottom were formed of a living bank of them, or as if 

 we had disturbed a submarine hive in the process of 

 swarming. The countless myriads of living Star-fishes 

 which thus cluster together, may serve to explain to us 

 the profusion with which similar animals, whose remains 

 are now found in rocky strata, were dispersed through 

 the waters of the early world. But, while we have this 

 similarity in relative quantity between the modern races 

 and those of ancient days, we find in this, as in most 

 other cases, a complete change in the types most com- 

 mon at different periods of the world's age. The ani- 

 mals which represent our Star-fishes in early strata have 

 wholly perished from the modern waters ; and the very- 

 type of structure to which they belonged has nearly be- 

 come extinct, and is now confined to a very few species. 

 In the seas which once flowed over the British Islands 

 there lived a race of Star-fishes whose bodies were af- 

 fixed, like flowers, to a slender stalk, composed of nume- 

 rous shelly plates, disposed like the bones in a vertebral 

 column, and connected together and rendered flexible 

 by the fleshy coat of the animal. This stalk was fixed 

 to some foreign body, and thus the Star-fish remained 

 at anchor, ready to seize upon any animal which came 

 within the length of its tether, but, unlike its modern 

 representative, unable to pursue its game to any dis_ 

 tance. The petrified remains of these curious animals are 

 commonly called Lily Stones, or Encrinites,and the joints 

 of their stem are known by the name of "St. Cuthbert's 

 beads." Whether they became, at any period of their 

 life, free from the stalk, and capable of independent 



