372 Reviews — EcJtinoid or Grinoid'( 



to smooth away certain other objections to regarding these objects 

 as radicles ; inter alia the total absence from his collections of any 

 coronal plates to bear them. It never occurs to him to make the 

 hypothesis that these objects are crinoids after all. Let us see 

 how that works out. Each, we may suppose, has normally three 

 radials, laterally fused into a short stalk, and springing from a solid 

 rounded mass into the composition of which the basals (and infra- 

 basals, if any) presumably enter. Each radial facet supported, on 

 this hypothesis, the first brachial of an arm. As to the nature of those 

 arms we have no evidence other than that afforded by the facet, 

 from which we gather that they were inde|)endently movable and 

 moderately massive. They must have included the viscera, since 

 there is not sufficient space between the radials, and therefore were 

 probably joined laterally by a finely plated membrane. 



On this hypothesis the hemisphere from which the radial stalk 

 springs was a sort of anchor resting on the sea-floor, perhaps some- 

 times embedded in sand or sometimes inserted in a crevice which 

 checked its free growth. Some of the specimens may have been 

 dragged along the bottom and so lost their pustules. Others may 

 have been partly weathered and have had their facets eaten away. 

 Individuals fixed in awkward positions may have developed one 

 or two facets at the expense of the others. All such aberrant cases 

 do not amount to 12 per cent'. The crinoid hypothesis, then, seems 

 open to fewer objections than the echinoid. Just as Dr. Wanner's 

 Timorechinus proved to be a crinoid allied to the Poteriocrinidse, 

 so his Timor ocidaris will probably turn out to be a crinoid with 

 stem reduced to a massive anchor, as in Agassizocrinus, and with 

 arms reduced to three, as in Tribracliiocrinus. It may be genetically 

 connected with one or other of those late Carboniferous genera, 

 but that is not a necessary conclusion. 



Professor Wanner argues from his supposed radioles with their 

 abnormal facets to Bolhoporites, which likewise he interprets as an 

 echinoid radiole with a peculiar facet. If, however, Timorocidaris 

 be a crinoid, this analogy loses its force. In no other respects does 

 Dr. Wanner throw fresh light on Bolhoporites. Had he taken the 

 trouble to make thin sections through his specimens and to study 

 their stereom with the microscojje, he might have substituted some 

 useful fact for a deal of ingenious but, I fear, useless fancy. 



F. A. Bather. 



The Pal^tEozoic Tillites of Northern Norway. Bidrag til 

 Finmarkens Geologi, av Olaf Holtedahl. Norges Geo- 

 logiske Undersokelse, Nr. 84. Kristiania, 1918. 

 TN 1890 Dr. H. Reusch announced his discovery in the 

 -*- Varangerfjord district, E. Finmarken, of rocks of glacial origin 

 " belonging to a much older period than the Ice Age ". He referred 

 them to the Palaeozoic, and, relying upon the petrographical 

 similarity of the beds associated with the tillites to the Sparagmite 



