DEVELOPMENT OF ANTEDON (COMATULA, LAMK.) EOSACEUS. 679 



these being likened in function to the proboscis of the Elej^liant or the upper lip of the 

 Horse. His second genus, named TptaKaiSeKUKvit^oc, is based on a specimen described by 

 Pktjvku' as having thirteen arms; this specimen, however, he suspects to have been 

 imperfect. To his third genus he gave the designation Caput Medusce, which had been 

 pre^ iously applied to the type since known as Earyale ; ajiparently thinking that it 

 might be much more appropriately conferred on Sea-stars having very numerous (sixty 

 or more) straight capillated arms, than on those with ramifying and twining but naked 

 arms, to which he gave the name Astrophyton. Of the Caput Medusce he described and 

 figured two species, Irunneum and cinereum, both from the Museum of Seba ; these do 

 not seem to differ, however, in anything but size and colour. 



It is not a little remai'kable that notwithstanding the correct approximation of the 

 CEiNOi'DEA by Llhuyd to the nearest type of the Echinoderm group then known, and 

 the prominence given to his views by their incorporation in the important systematic 

 treatise of LixcKius, they should have been almost entirely without influence on the 

 opinions of the most eminent Naturalists of the 18th Century. For, to pass by the 

 notion of one that the stems of Encrinites are parts of the vertebral column of certain 

 Fishes, and the idea of another that they are the products of the siphon of Orthoceratites, 

 we find Ellis'^ (in 1753) suggesting that his UmhellulariaEncrinus (thePennatula Encrinus 

 of Pallas'') is the analogue of the Encrinus liliiformis. a figure of which he places by 

 the side of that of his " cluster-polype " for the sake of comparison. He seems, howevci*, 

 to have had his doubts of the reality of this resemblance rather strengthened than 

 removed by furtlier inquiry ; for in his ' Essay on Corallines ' published two years 

 afterwards, we find him, whilst repeating his previous figures, thus expressing himself: — 

 " At K is a figure of the Encrinos or lAlium Lapideum ; which, whether it may not be 

 the petrified Exuvke of this Animal, is submitted to the consideration of the curious in 

 Fossils ; for they have not yet been able, I apprehend, to fix upon anything more jiro- 

 bable. The difference that appears to me, upon consulting EosiNUS, a German author-, 

 who has published a treatise at Hamburgh particularly on this curious fossil, is that 

 the Encrinos has rather been a species of Starfish, with a jointed stem or tail; and the 

 rays of the star, instead of having Tentacula, or claws, at the end of each, like our 

 Polype, are furnished with ranges of jointed fibres, along the inside of each ray like a 

 brush ; of which the same author has given a curious plate, with a particular description 

 of this extraordinary fossil." (Op. cit. p. 99.) The notion of the relationship of Encrinus 

 to JJmhellulana and its Zoophytic allies, thus suggested by Ellis, was explicitly adopted 

 by Mylius^ in a treatise which he published at the same period on the same subject; 



' Pi;tivi;ri, Jacobi; ' Gazophylacium Naturoc et Artis;' Londini, 1711: — also 'Aquatilium AnimaUum 

 Amboincnsium, Icoues et nomina ; ' Londini, 1713. 



' Pliilosophical Transactions, vol. xlviii. part 1, p. 305. 



' Elcnchus Zoopliytorura. Ifar/ce Com! turn: p. 365. 



* Boschrcibung cincr ncucn Griiiilaudischcn Thierpflanzc, pp. IG, 17. Hannover, 1753, and London, 1754. 

 MDCCCLXVI. 5 A 



