215 



soon led, by several coincident circumstances, to discover that the 

 fossils to which the Professor refers, are similar to those of Wiltshire r 

 the nature of which I have just been endeavouring to ascertain. 



The Professor remarks, that many had doubted the existence of ra- 

 mified entrochi, and had supposed that their apparent branches were 

 corals formed on them, in consequence of the coral-forming polype^ 

 having by accident become attached to their trunks. Of this opi- 

 nion, he observes, he might perhaps himself have been, had not some 

 of these specimens proved to him, that these branches were not merely 

 attached to the surface of the column, but had actually proceeded from 

 its interior part. The crenulated articulation, one of the essential cha- 

 racters of the entrochi, he observes, was discoverable in these ramifi- 

 cations, which convinced him that the matter of which these branches 

 were formed had not been applied accidentally to the surface of the 

 column, and satisfied him that these were ramified entrochi, and parts 

 of some zoophyte of the family of enerini. 



The first specimen, represented Tab. G. II. Fig. 1, of Knorr's works, 

 is evidently formed of a fragment of the tumid part of the lower ex- 

 tremity of a large pear encrinus, with its proportionally thick invest- 

 ing tunics. This investing part, as well as the part which it involves, 

 bears very plainly the marks of the crenulated lines of articula- 

 tion ; and as plainly, also, manifests its laminated structure. So evi- 

 dent is this latter circumstance, that Mons. d'Annone, who compares 

 its lamellae, so regularly disposed on one another, to the coats of an 

 onion, is inclined to think that these concentric rings bear some ana- 

 logy to those which mark the successive annual increase of trees. The 

 circumstances here remarked are particularly obvious in Tab. G. II. 

 Eig. 4, of the above work. 



In one of the specimens of Prof. d'Annone, the entrochus, after di- 

 viding at its base into five branches, is spread along the surface of, and 

 imbedded in. the calcareous stone, in such a form as to give at once the 

 idea of its being the radicle or foot-stalk of the encrinus. (Astropo- 



