280 Hevieivs — Wachsmnth (^ Springer's Monograph on Crinoids. 



benefit of Science. But it is an even chance thattliey will be buried 

 in the debris of the quarry, broken up for ballast, or walled up 

 in the foundation of a building, and thus be lost again. Out of the 

 thousands of square miles in which these rocks lie nearest the 

 surface, all the collections that have ever been made represent only 

 the imperfect gleanings of not more than a few acres. If it be 

 supposed that we get, even in this way, a fair representation of the 

 crinoidal life of that period, the answer is that almost every new 

 discovery of ' nests ' or ' colonies ' of good specimens brings to light 

 new forms, and that species or genera hitherto very rare are often 

 suddenly found within a limited space quite abundantly. In the 

 Upper Coal Measures, to judge from our books and museums, one 

 would suppose that Crinoids were well-nigh extinct. Scarcely 

 a dozen species are known, and most of them only by their lower 

 calyx plates. Yet there are many beds in this formation which 

 extend over hundreds of thousands of square miles from the Missouri 

 Valley far into the Eocky Mountains and tilted up along their flanks, 

 which are completely filled with fragments of Crinoids. Suddenly 

 the collectors at Kansas City, who have studied these rocks for 

 years, discover an abundant deposit of well preserved specimens 

 in a shale so soft that a few minutes' rain dissolves them into 

 unrecognizable fragments." (pp. 167-8.) 



The historical account of the European literature will no doubt be 

 of use to American workers, but it would have been of more value 

 to them, and to all of us, had Messrs. Wachsmuth and Springer been 

 in a position to verify their references and quotations instead of 

 copying from De Koninck and W. B. Carpenter. The writings of 

 Agricola and Eosinus may not be accessible to workers in Iowa or 

 New Mexico, but no specialist on Crinoidea can be forgiven for 

 misrepresenting J. S. Miller and Johannes M tiller, as do our authors. 

 Let me substantiate this criticism in detail. 



Agricola, we are told (p. 11), applied the name " Encrhius to the 

 calyx of JSncrinus liliiformia, at that time the only Crinoid in which 

 a crown had been found in connection with the stem." This is the 

 intensification of an error already bad enough. It was Harenberg 

 who, in 1729, thus misapplied Agricola's term Encriniis, which 

 originally bore the same relation to Pentacrinus as JSntroclms bore to 

 Troddtes, i.e. JSncrmus meant a series of star-shaped colunmals. 

 What Agricola and the rest really did say is set forth in my recent 

 paper, "Pentacrinus: a name and its history" [Natural Science, 

 vol. xii, pp. 245-256). 



The next paragraph says that " Eosinus .... was the first 

 writer to show that the Crinoids were not plants, as before then 

 generally supposed, but were closely related to the Asterids." 

 Eosinus was a writer of much merit, but the date of his " De Stellis 

 Marinis quondam nunc Fossilibus Disquisitio" was 1719, whereas 

 Llhuyd had published even more correct views in his " Lithophylacii 

 Britannici Ichnographia," issued at London and Leipzig in 1699 

 (see Natural Science, loc. cit., also vol. xii, pp. 292 and 431). 

 Wachsmuth and Springer's error, copied from De Koninck, was 

 long ago corrected by W. B. Carpenter. 



