'20? 



openings and similar articulations with those which are seen in the 

 trunk itself. On the specimen described by Mr. Walch, he remarks, 

 that there also exist several mamillary projections, resembling small 

 branches, and which, being placed over some of the openings which 

 pass from the centre to the circumference, have these openings or 

 holes continued quite through them. If, he observes, we have a 

 right to suppose that similar little branches were placed over all 

 these little openings, these branches must have been exceedingly 

 small, and so prodigiously numerous, as to give it the appearance 

 of a brush. 



The following differences, it must be admitted, serve to place these 

 entrochi, and of course the encrinus to which they belong, under a 

 distinct species. The width of the column appears to much exceed 

 the width of entrochi in general ; the lines of articulation are much 

 finer than in other entrochi, and are not so regularly disposed : 

 hence a degree of irregularity in the thickness, and in the figure of 

 the trochites themselves, which is unknown in other trochitae. From 

 this discordance many had been disposed to consider these bodies ra- 

 ther as ramified corals than as entrochi ; but Mr. Walch observes, that 

 they agree with these bodies in every essential circumstance, and 

 therefore should be considered as the parts of the trunk of an encrinus, 

 which, judging by the size of the stem, must have been of a very consi- 

 derable size. If the stems of an ell in length, found by the limeburners 

 of the Isle of Gothland, were but of the ordinary thickness, then, as 

 Mr. Walch observes, the stems of such a thickness, or that which is 

 possessed by the specimen, represented Fig. 6, should be, in propor- 

 tion of three ells or more in length. How much, he remarks, does 

 there here remain to be discovered ! 



The exact accordance of the Gothland fossils with the stern of the 

 Shropshire (the turban) encrinite, in the thinness of the trochitre, the 

 fineness of their radiating lines, the numerous lateral openings, and 

 the protruding processes, shews indubitably, that these fossils*have all 

 belonged to the same species of encrinite. 



