RARITY OF LIVING ENCRINITES. 177 



of the Encrinite kind which had been seen in the seas 

 of Europe, and the first recent Encrinite that had 

 ever been examined by a competent observer in the 

 living state. 



The history of this creature, says Professor Forbes, 

 is one of those little romances in which Natural 

 History abounds; one of those narrations which, 

 while believing, we almost doubt, and yet, while 

 doubting, we must believe it being the only crinoid 

 animal at present inhabiting our seas, at one time so 

 full of those beautiful and wonderful creatures, and 

 consequently presenting points of great interest, not 

 to the zoologist only, but to the geologist. 



Such is the rarity of living Encrinites, that many 

 years elapsed from the first discovery of the fossil 

 Crinoidea before any living species presented itself; 

 and -during the last half- century, although Natural 

 History and Geology have been pursued with zeal 

 and ardour, and with advantages too heretofore un- 



surface only presents the arms and fingers of these fossil animals 

 expanded, like plants in a hortus siccus ; while the upper surface 

 exhibits only a congeries of stems in contact with the under 

 surface of the lignite. The greater number of these stems are 

 usually parallel to one another, as if drifted in the same direction 

 by the current in which they floated. 



The mode in which these animal remains are thus collected 

 immediately beneath the lignite, and never on its upper surface, 

 seems to show that the creatures had attached themselves in 

 large groups (like modern barnacles) to the masses of floating 

 wood, which, together with them, were suddenly buried in the 

 mud, whose accumulation gave origin to the marl wherein this 

 curious compound stratum of animal and vegetable remains 

 is imbedded. BucklancFs Bridgewater Treatise. 



i 5 



