OF CREATION. 



35 



orifice o was covered with a little five or six-sided 

 pyramid, made up of as many little valves. The 

 whole stony case, which, in some instances (Spharo- 

 nites), resembles a little green orange, was supported 

 on a very slender stalk, which, however, is rarely 

 preserved. In the more advanced form (6), the 

 mouth and proboscis are still present, but there were 

 a number of arms projecting from the summit around 

 the mouth ; and the orifices do not exist, since the 

 eggs were carried out at the openings for the arms. 

 The fossils exhibiting this singular structure are by no 

 means common ; but they afford so beautiful a transi- 

 tion from lower to higher forms, and are so little 

 known, that a notice of them cannot fail to be inte- 

 resting. Fragments of encrinites, more resembling 

 the modern types, are common in some of the rocks 

 of the older period, and are much like fossils of the 

 same family found in the upper members of this group 

 of rocks. 



The encrinites, although so nearly like the coral 

 polyps in some points of structure, and in the simpli- 

 city of their organization, belong, however, to a much 

 higher group, and exhibit important resemblances to 

 the star-fishes ; and just as they are the least orga- 

 nized of the star-fishes, and as the coral polyps are 

 the lowest of that group of Zoophytes which possess 

 no trace of nervous filament, so among the Crustace- 

 ans of the earliest period (a great natural group, in- 

 cluding the crabs, the lobsters, &c.) we find nearly a 

 similar peculiarity ; the species most commonly found 

 in the older rocks exhibiting very simple structure, 

 although developed to a great extent in point of num- 

 ber at one time, and only dying out towards the 



