Aaatomlcal Nomenclature of Echiaodenns. 7 



many respects preferable to parabasals. But it was demon- 

 strated in 1878 that the parabasals or subradials of dicyclic 

 (Jrinoids are the real basal plates, and that the plates hitherto 

 called by that name are an additional element in the calyx, 

 for which the name under-basals was proposed. Messrs. 

 Wachsmuth and Springer adopted this change in Part I. of 

 their ' Revision of the Pala^ocrinoidea,' which appeared in the 

 following year, and their example has been followed by five 

 writers on Crinoids in the United States, including the late 

 Professor Wortlien himself, and two in Canada. With the 

 exception of the late Professor Qaenstedt all the continental 

 paleontologists * who have written on Crinoids in general 

 during the last decade have abandoned the use of the term 

 basals for the lower ring of plates in the dicyclic base in 

 favour of under-basals or infra basals ; so that it has really 

 seemed as if the rational system of nomenclature w^as coming 

 into general use. In America, however, S. A. Miller has 

 steadily declined to adopt it, and he has continued to use the 

 purely empirical terminology of de Koninck. His reasons 

 for this course were stated as follows in 1883 : — " Most 

 American authors, and I might say all, until quite recently, 

 have called the plates, in the first ring above the column, the 

 basals, and when the second exists they have called them 

 subradials. Certainly no names can be easier or more ex- 

 pressive. . . . The policy of changing the nomenclature may 

 well be doubted, and ought not to be entered upon without 

 the clearest conviction, that, by so doing, error of some kind 

 is being eradicated " t. In reply to this it was pointed out J 

 that the change had been proposed expressly to avoid the 

 error of giving the same name " basals " to parts which are 

 not homologous in monocyclic and in dicyclic Crinoids respec- 

 tively. This argument does not seem to have produced any 

 impression upon Miller ; for in the useful Catalogue of 

 North American Paleozoic fossils which he has recently 

 published he still uses the term basals for the lowest plates of 

 the dicyclic calyx. The confusion into which he is thus led 



• Dalmer, Fritsch, and Wagner describe the dicyclic base of Encrinus 

 as composed of inner and onter basals. Neuniayr used the same termin- 

 ology for dicyclic Crinoids generally, with the collective names basis and 

 iiifrahusis ; but he took especial care to point out that the former and not 

 the latter is homologous with the basis of monocyclic Crinoids, 



t "6-7^/)iocri'««s redefined and restricted, Gaurocrinus, Pi/cnocrinus, hnd 

 Cumpsocrinus established, and two new Species described," Jomn. Ciucinn. 

 Soc. Nat. Hist, 1883, vol. vi, p, 218. 



I " On a new Crinoid from the Southern Sea," Phil, Traas. 1883, 

 p, 932. 



