1314 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 



are brought up that in some places they must be 

 wonderfully numerous; and we frequently dredge 

 sponges and corals actually covered with them in the 

 attitudes in which they lived, nestling among their 

 fibres and in the angles of their branches. I have 

 counted seventy-three examples of Amphiura abyssi- 

 cola, small and large, sticking to one Holtenia. 



Both on account of their beauty and extreme 

 rarity, and of the important part they have borne 

 in the fauna of some of the past periods of the 

 earth's history, the first order of the Echinoderms, 

 the Crinoidea, has always had a special interest to 

 naturalists; and, on the watch as we were for 

 missing links which might connect the present with 

 the past, we eagerly welcomed any indication of their 

 presence. Crinoids were very abundant in the seas 

 of the Silurian period. But during the lapse of 

 ages the whole order seems to have been worsted 

 in the ''struggle for life." They become scarce in the 

 newer Mesozoic beds, still scarcer in the Tertiaries, 

 and up to within the last few years only two 

 living stalked crinoids were known in the seas 

 of the present period, and these appeared to be 

 confined to deep water in the seas of the Antilles, 

 whence fishermen from time to time bring up muti- 

 lated specimens on their lines. Their existence has 

 been known for more than a century; but although 

 many eyes have been watching for them, until very 

 lately not more than twenty specimens had reached 

 Europe, and of these only two showed all the joints 

 and plates of the skeleton, and the soft parts were 

 lost in all. 



