26 



base, which afterwards becomes absorbed, and the creature is free. 

 But since then actual specimens of allied genera have been dis- 

 covered in European seas. The first was found in 1864 by a son of 

 Professor Sars, off the Loffoten Islands, and was described by the 

 Professor as Rhizocrinus Loffotensis. It represents in a very 

 debased form the well known Pear Encrinite, of which such 

 beautiful specimens are found at Bradford, in Wilts. Finally, in 

 1870, a real Pentacrinite was taken during the Porcupine expedition, 

 off the coast of Portugal, in 1,095 fathoms, by Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, 

 and called by him P. Wyville-Thomsoni. The stem has at the base 

 five arms, which can be used as grapplers, and the animal can pro- 

 bably move from place to place j so that it holds an intermediate 

 place between the genus of Crinoids which is free (Antedon), and 

 those which are fixed permanently. 



A third genus was added also by the deep sea dredging expedi- 

 tion. This is called Bathycrinus, and was brought up from a depth 

 of 2,435 fathoms, off the Bay of Biscay, about 200 miles south of 

 Cape Clear. 



Of the Mollusca, I must only call your attention to one genus 

 that of the Belemnites. Their distribution is very puzzling. 

 Plentiful in the Oxford clay and Kelloway rock, they are ex- 

 tremely rare in the Cornbrash. Professor Phillips mentions a 

 specimen from Yorkshire; our President has just been showing 

 me the phragmacone of another example from Puncknowle, and I 

 saw one in the rich Wiltshire collection of Mr. Cunnington, now, I 

 am afraid, dispersed. They are rare in forest marble, Bradford 

 clay, great oolite (though some specimens are found at Stonesfield), 

 and Fuller's earth. In the inferior oolite, on the other hand, they are 

 extremely abundant, and still more so in the Lias, until a particular 

 zone is reached that of Ammonites Bucklandi. No specimens are 

 known from the Tertiaries (the little Belemnosis, belonging to the 

 Sepiadse), and there are none now living. Why should they be so 

 common both above and below the Cornbrash, and in the Cornbrash 

 itself should scarcely be found at all ? No doubt the Belemnites 

 .were not littoral, but deep sea creatures, and if the Cornbrash was 

 not deposited in quite such shallow water as the Forest Marble, in 

 which ripple marks are still so commonly to be met with, yet it was 

 a shallow water deposit nevertheless. But then the Ammonites and 

 the Nautili were both deep sea forms, and with shells far more 



