Beviews — Wachsmuth 8f Springer's Monograph on Crinoids. 281 



GuettavcT next receives some praise that is far too faint. The 

 name " Palmier marin " was not his invention ; the animal to which 

 it was applied has been more correctly known as Pentacrinus asteria 

 than as P. caput-medusce ; there are three misprints in the reference 

 to his paper. 



Blumenbach (the date of whose " Handbuch der Naturgeschichte," 

 Ed. 1, is 1779, not 1780) obtains "the credit of having been the 

 first writer who ranked them [crinoids] with the Asteroids and 

 Ophinrids among the order ' Vermes crustaoei,' which corresponds 

 approximately to our present Echinoderms." He may have been 

 the first post-Linncean writer to do this ; but he was only following 

 Llhuyd in both arrangement and terminology. Moreover, in the 

 edition of the " Handbuch " cited by our authors, Blumenbach 

 referred the Echinoderms to ' Cartilaginea,' associating the crinoids 

 with various Hydrozoa. It was not until 1788 that he placed them 

 under ' Crustacea.' 



J. S. Miller's definition of a crinoid is turned into nonsense on 

 p. 12. Miller wrote as follows, but Wachsmuth and Springer have 

 quoted only the italicized words : " An animal imtli a round, oval, or 

 angular column, composed of numerous articulating joints, supporting 

 at its summit a series of plates or joints forming a cup-like body 

 containing the viscera, from whose upper rim proceed five articulated 

 arms, dividing into tentaculated fingers, more or less numerous, 

 surrounding the aperture of the mouth, situated in the centre of 

 a plated integument, which extends over the abdominal cavity, and 

 is capable of being contracted into a conic or proboscal shape." The 

 omissions can scarcely be intentional. 



On p. 14 "Heisinger (1837)" no doubt refers to Hisinger's 

 "Letheea suecica," which was published in that year, and not to 

 Heusinger, who also was an early writer on crinoids. 



On the same page it is said that Joh. Miiller's paper " Ueber 

 den Bau des Pentacrinus caput- medusae " appeared in 1840. The 

 first part of it was read in that year, but none was published till 

 1843. In this paper Miiller wrote as an anatomist rather than as 

 a systematist, and it is not easy to understand what his precise 

 views as to the classification may have been. Probably he wrote thus 

 of set purpose, recognizing that the time for a formal classification 

 of crinoids had not arrived, and intending only to give names to 

 certain plans of structure. Nevertheless, my interpretation of 

 Miiller is so different from that of Messrs. Wachsmuth and Springer 

 that I can only suppose they have not referred to the original paper, 

 incredible though such an inference may seem. " Miiller,'' they 

 write, " divided the Crinoids into three great groups : the ' Crinoidea 

 Articulata,' the ' Crinoidea Tessellata,' and the ' Crinoidea Costata.' " 

 And again: "The Tessellata were subdivided by Miiller into two 

 groups : Crinoidea with arms, and Crinoidea without arms. To the 

 former he referred all true Crinoids and the Cystid genus Carijo- 



crintis The a j-miess Crinoids comprise the ' Pentremites' 



(Blastoidea) and ' Spheeronites' (Cystidea)." 



Instead of criticizing these statements in detail I will contrast 



