420 liem'eu's — WachsmutJi ^ S2)ringer's Ponograph on Crinoids. 



Baerocrimis, in which two of the radial plates are non-armbearing, 

 and as these plates occur in the same rays as the compound plates 

 of Anomalocrinns, we may infer that Baerocrimis is the ancestral 

 form, lower in its development than either Anomalocrinns, JSojph- 

 crinus, or locrinus.'' Sad experience prevents me from attempting 

 any interpretation of Wachsmuth and Springer's views on this 

 difficult genus Baerocrimis ; it is enough to point out that fresh 

 material has led Professors Fr. von Schmidt and 0. Jaekel to the 

 conclusion that it is based on an abnormal form of Eoplocritms. 



Apparently Messrs. Wachsmuth and Springer regard the presence 

 of inferradials as a primitive character. They do not, however, 

 accept the statement published by me in 1893, that "a very large 

 number of Inadunata Monocyclica closely resemble one another, 

 either in the horizontal bisection of certain radials, a character 

 which in Dicyclica is entirely confined to the right postei'ior radial, 

 or in the greater development of certain other radials." ^ These 

 facts appeared to me to confirm the separation of monocyclic from 

 dicyclic forms. The justice of this conclusion may be debated ; 

 but as to the facts there should be no question, and I regret to find 

 the above statement seriously objected to by the learned Americans. 



First let us examine their remarks on the compound radials. 

 As to their presence in Dicyclica, setting aside the right posterior 

 radial, they say, " He overlooks the dicyclic Tribrachiocrimis, which 

 has three compound radials." This statement does not agree with 

 Wachsmuth and Springer's own diagnosis (" Revision of Pala^o- 

 crinoidea," iii, p. 251), or with their remark in the present Monograph 

 (p. 72) that "the later Fistulata have no true compound radials"; 

 nor, as is more important, does it agree with the full descriptions by 

 Mr. E. Etheridge, jun. (1892), abstracted in the Geol. Mag., Dec. Ill, 

 VoL X, p. 82, descriptions which the courtesy of Mr. Etheridge and 

 others enabled me to verify in person when at Sydney. Supposing 

 it to be the case that two radials of TrihracJiiocrinus have fused with 

 the first primibrachs, this does not make them horizontally bisected. 

 Messrs. Wachsmuth and Springer write as though it made no 

 difference whether one got a half-crown or two shillings in change 

 for a florin. 



Next our authors say that among the twenty-four genera which 

 I referred to the Monocyclica " only eight have three compound, 

 radials," " there are three with two compound radials, Anomalocrinus, 

 Ohiocrimis, and Baerocrimis, and three with a single one ; the 

 remaining ten genera have simple radials throughout." Even 

 were these statements correct, the group Monocyclica would have 

 58-8 per cent, of its genera with compound radials, as opposed to 

 a problematical 1 per cent, in Dicyclica. Such a fact cannot be 

 " seriously in the way of making the presence or absence of 

 infrabasals a subordinal character." But the statements neither 

 were nor are corx-ect. Ohiocrimis, for instance, is here said to have 

 but two compound radials ; but in the same authors' " Eevision " 

 (pt. iii, p. 208) it was said to have "the plates of the calyx* 



1 " Crinoidea of Gotland, I," p. 20 : Svenska Vet-Akad. Handl, xxv, No. 2. 



