3 



Mr. Damon, the well-known naturalist, exhibited a living Penta- 

 crinus from the Carribean Sea. It may not be out of place here 

 to make a passing remark on the family of which this Crinoid is a 

 member. Numbers of them made their appearance early in the 

 earth's history, they were exceedingly abundant during the 

 Silurian age, and some of the Carboniferous Limestones are 

 almost entirely composed of them. During the Mesozoic age 

 they diminished both in genera and species, and became gradually 

 rarer in the succeeding geological periods down to the 

 present day ; and, until the dredging cruises of the Porcu- 

 pine and the Lightning in 1869, only two living stalked 

 Crinoids were known, and these were confined to deep 

 water in the seas of the Antilles ; both of which belong to the 

 genus Pentacrinus, which is well represented in the lias of Lyme, 

 and in the Oxford clays of Weymouth. Mr. Damon's specimen 

 Pentacrinus aster i a (Lin,'] has a stem, bearing whorls of fine 

 cirri, which possess the power of contracting themselves around 

 the objects they touch. In 1869 Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys dredged up 

 a new species from a depth of 1095 fathoms. With this inter- 

 esting link of the chain which binds the Stone Lilies of past ages 

 with their living congeners, we bid farewell to Weymouth, 

 and proceed to an account of our next meeting, at Bridport, which 

 took place on the 1 3th day of July ; here the members were hospit- 

 ably received by their fellow associates, Mr. and Mrs. Coif ox, and 

 proceeded by railway to Powerstock. The line passes through 

 a fertile liassic valley as far as Loders, when the country 

 becomes more picturesque and undulatory, the reddish tinge of 

 the soil, and the surface strewed with fragmentary stone-brash, 

 hinted to us that we had passed from the Lias to the Inferior 

 Oolites. At Powerstock-Station the party alighted on the 

 platform, and proceeded to examine the adjoining quarries, 

 which expose a most interesting section of the Dorsetshire 

 Cephalopoda beds of the Inferior Oolites, and upon which there 

 has been some uncertainty as to their relative position with the 

 series in other parts of England. These Cephalopoda beds are 

 largely developed at Bradford Abbas, the residence of our 

 esteemed associate, Professor Buckman, who has passed them 

 through a critical comparison with the representative beds in 

 Gloucestershire, with which he is well acquainted, as may 

 be gathered from his " Geology of Cheltenham and the neigh- 

 bourhood." I venture to think Professor Buckman's view will 

 be generally adopted as to the actual horizon of the Powerstock, 

 Burton Bradstock, and Bradford Abbas Cephalopoda beds, and 

 their relative position with the Sands so largely developed at 

 Burton Bradstock and the neighbourhood of Yeovil ; these were 

 supposed to be identical with the Midford Sands, the basement 

 beds of the Lias ; but the Professor tells me the paleontological 

 evidences prove a much higher horizon, and he considers them 



