222 REVIEWS 
science as originally inaugurated was the foundation of modern strati- 
graphical geology; but of recent years the biological interest has 
developed so rapidly with the vast accumulations of remains of ancient 
organic life that this branch of the subject bids fair to soon cut loose 
entirely from the parent stem. No better illustration of this tendency 
has been shown than at a late gathering of the principal scientific 
societies of America. Of all the paleontological papers presented at 
the meetings not a single one was read before the Geological Society ; 
the entire list was discussed at the biological associations. 
The impetus given to palzontology in the direction of pure biology 
is timely, and the delay in entering that field may be ascribed chiefly to 
lack of sufficient and proper material for satisfactory study. The pale- 
ontologists of the new school have taken up the discussion of live 
organisms and their examination according to the latest and most 
approved methods in order that the long extinct forms of life might be 
interpreted more correctly. And the most advanced students of exist- 
ing beings are beginning to look with less aversion than formerly to 
the fossils for the missing links for a complete phylogeny and ontog- 
eny of living things. As the result of it all the value of organic 
remains for solving the intricate problems of the stratigraphic geology 
will be increaseda hundredfold. The exhilarating effects have already 
begun to be felt in that branch of geological inquiry that was thought 
to be all but inert. 
The life and racial histories of fossil vertebrates have for some time 
past yielded most beautiful and suggestive results. In the same direction 
the vastly more ‘extensive groups of the invertebrate has in this country 
at least received scarcely athought. Paleontologists therefore will hail 
with delight the appearance of Wachsmuth and Springer’s masterly and 
exhaustive monograph on the North American camerata the most 
important branch of the crinoids. While it is first of all morphological 
from the foundation up, and the product of inquiries more thoroughly 
grounded in biological philosophy than any other work perhaps that 
has ever been issued on the fossil invertebrates in this country, it is 
also of such high utility in stratigraphy, especially in the great Missis- 
sippi basin, that it may be truly said no other one work has ever fur- 
nished so valuable criteria for the purposes of correct correlation of 
geological formations. 
Of all fossil remains none are more admirably adapted for morpho- 
logical study than those of the echinoderms. On account of their 
