142 THE WORLD'S LUMBER ROOM. 



Though the name of " marble," is often inaccurately ap- 

 plied to any stone which will take a polish, it really belongs 

 only to hardened limestones, many of which owe their beauty 

 to the fossil remains which they enclose. Some consist 

 almost entirely of sea-shells, others, which occur only in 

 small beds, of small fresh-water snail-shells, while another, 

 again, is crowded with ammonites, which somewhat resemble 

 the modern nautilus, and also with the internal " shell," or, 

 rather, single bone, which formed the skeleton of the ancient 

 cuttle-fish. Perhaps the most beautiful marble of all is that 

 found in large quantities in Derbyshire, which is composed 

 of the remains of encrinites, or stone-lilies, a sort of stalked 

 star-fish, having cup-shaped bodies and fringed rays with 

 numerous joints which they could spread out to entrap their 

 prey. The stem was formed of innumerable small, star- 

 shaped pieces of hard carbonate of lime, and was so pliant as 

 to bend to and fro before the waves. The upper part of one 

 of these lilies is said to have consisted of nearly 27,000 

 separate joints. 



Deep beds of encrihital limestone have been formed of 

 the skeletons of these lilies, which, though sometimes 

 found almost entire, are generally broken into a thousand 

 fragments. It had been thought that very few of these 

 stone-lilies now existed, but numerous specimens have 

 lately been found as far north as Siberia. In ancient 

 times, however, they were far more abundant, and in the 

 north of Europe and America there are vast strata, com- 

 posed entirely of their remains. 



It is no mystery, therefore, what becomes of the moun- 

 tains of lime which are carried into the ocean, where the 



