A A TURE 



573 



THURSDAY, APRIL 23, if 



THE "CHALLENGER" EXPEDITION 

 Report on the Stalked Crinoidea Collected during the 

 " Challenger" Expedition. By P.Herbert Carpenter, 

 M.A., D.Sc. 4to, pp. 440, with 69 Plates. (London: 

 Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office.) 

 " T'HE Stalked Crinoids," says Mr. Murray in his 

 -L prefatory notice to this Report, " both on account 

 of their rarity and their palseontological relations, are 

 perhaps the most interesting and remarkable of deep-sea 

 animals, and have been in a special manner associated 

 with the Challenger Expedition. The joint work of the 

 late Sir C. Wyville Thomson and Dr. W. B. Carpenter, 

 tirst on Comatula and afterwards on Pentacrinus, together 

 with the discover)- by Prof. G. O. Sars of Rhizocrinus off 

 the Lofoten Islands in 1864, led directly to the expe- 

 ditions of the Lightning and the Porcupine in 1S6S and 

 the following years ; and was thus indirectly concerned 

 in the despatch of the Challenger Expedition in 1872.'' 

 Not only for these reasons, but also on account of the 

 exceptional value of Dr. P. H. Carpenter's Report, we 

 shall give it a full notice. 



Every scientific Palaeontologist regards the group of 

 Crinoidea with special interest. Not only do its fossilized 

 skeletons present themselves — frequently in a state of 

 admirable preservation — in almost all marine limestones 

 from the Lower Silurian to the present time ; but they 

 are not unfrequently found to furnish by their accumula- 

 tion no inconsiderable proportion of the calcareous mate- 

 rial of such formations. And in the course of this long 

 succession they exhibit a number of remarkable changes 

 of type, each characteristic of a particular epoch. The 

 most singular errors formerly prevailed respecting their 

 zoological relations ; and it was not until the publication 

 in 1821 of the "Natural History of the Crinoidea" 'by 

 J. S. Miller, a German naturalist residing in Bristol, that 

 any successful attempt was made to systematise the 

 group, by showing the true relation of its diversified 

 forms to each other and to existing types. Miller was 

 acute enough to recognise the close resemblance in the 

 skeleton of the Liassic Crinoids first differentiated 

 by him as Pentacrini — not only to that of a stalked 

 Crinoid still living in the West Indian seas (which he 

 described under the name of Pentacrinus caput Medusa), 

 but also to the unstalked Comatula of our own shores, 

 which had been previously ranked with Euryale as an 

 Ophiurid ; and taking this as his point of departure, he 

 worked out the morphology of the other fossil Crinoids 

 then known, with a success which has rendered his 

 Monograph the foundation of all that has been since done 

 for the systematic arrangement of the multitudinous 

 extinct forms which pateontological research is continu- 

 ally bringing to light. His recognition of the Crinoidal 

 character of Comatula was afterwards fully confirmed by 

 the discovery, made in 1836 by Mr. J. V. Thompson of 

 Cork, that Comatula passes the earlier part of its life in 

 the attached condition as a Pentacrinoid ; dropping off 

 its stem at a certain stage of its growth, and thenceforth 

 remaining free. 



The "epoch-making" monograph of J. S. Miller was 

 Vol. xxxi.— No. 808 



followed in 1834 by the now classical Memoir of Joh. 

 Muller, of Berlin, " Ueber den Ban des Pentacrinus caput 

 Medusa" ; of which recent type the soft parts were then 

 for the first time described. The material for this de- 

 scription was chiefly furnished by a single spirit-specimen 

 of the West Indian Pentacrinus j but as this wanted its 

 visceral mass, the description of that part was supplied 

 from Comatula, the structure of whose arms and ventral 

 disk was found to conform very closely to that of the 

 same parts in Pentacrinus. Muller completely reformed 

 the nomenclature of his predecessor ; and his designa- 

 tions of the several pieces of the Crinoid skeleton are 

 now adopted by all writers on the group. And as, in 

 addition, he was the first to give an account (although in 

 several respects an erroneous one) of the nutritive and 

 reproductive apparatus of the Crinoids, his memoir con- 

 stitutes, as it were, the basement-story of the edifice 

 whose foundation had been laid by J. S. Miller. 



This was afterwards further built upon by Prof. Wyville 

 Thomson and Dr. W. B. Carpenter ; who, seeing that a 

 thorough study of the entire life-history of Comatula 

 would be likely to furnish a key to that of the extinct 

 Crinoids, agreed to prosecute it conjointly : the former 

 undertaking the earliest stage, that of the free-swimming 

 pro-embryo (whose existence had been made known by 

 Busch, a pupil of Muller), up to the time of its first 

 attachment by a calcareous stem ; and the latter following 

 the Pentacrinoid through the successive phases of its 

 existence, to its detachment and subsequent full develop- 

 ment into the free Comatula. The results of their 

 researches, embodied in the successive communica- 

 tions made by them to the Royal Society, have not 

 only shown how these creatures lived and moved, but 

 have furnished (as they anticipated) valuable guidance to 

 all subsequent investigators into the Pateontological 

 history of the Crinoidea. And they have also served as 

 the basis of the more minute anatomical inquiries of 

 Ludwig, Greef, Perier, and Dr. P. Herbert Carpenter ; 

 which, prosecuted with every advantage afforded by im- 

 proved methods of microscopic examination, have con- 

 firmed Dr. Carpenter's correction of several serious errors 

 in Muller's anatomy ; whilst his important determination 

 both anatomical and experimental, of the principal nervous 

 system in Crinoidea, has been recently put beyond all 

 doubt (though long contested as morphologically imposs- 

 ible) by the further experiments of Prof. A. M. Marshall 

 and Dr. Jickeli (see p. 407 et seq. of Dr. P. H. Carpenter's 

 Report). 



Prof. G. O. Sars's discovery, in 1864, on a bottom of 

 from 400-500 fathoms' depth, of the singular little stalked 

 Crinoid to which he gave the name Rhizocrinus lofo- 

 tensis, was followed by the discovery, in the Porcupine 

 Expedition of 1869, of a new and delicate Crinoid 

 belonging to the same family, named Batiiycrinus 

 gracilis by Wyville Thomson, who brought it up from 

 2435 fathoms' depth in the East Atlantic ; a second 

 species of Rhizocrinus being also met with. And in J870 

 a fortunate haul made by the Porcupine in 800-900 

 fathoms off the coast of Portugal, brought up twenty 

 specimens of a full-sized new species of Pentacrinus. 

 called by Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys (who had charge of that 

 cruise) P. wyville-thomsoni. 



About the same period, the United States Coast Survey 



c c 



