468 REVIEWS — ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 



species, cited in this connexion, is tlie Bhodocrinus pi/riformis. 'With 

 regard to this species, Mr. Billings states that he has " seen speci- 

 mens with from six to ten inches of the column attached to the base 

 of the cup, and with the terminal joint, where the fracture occurred, 

 rounded, and the alimentary canal closed, or, as it were, healed up:" 

 a condition which certainly goes far in favor of his suggestion. 



A new and interesting genus belonging to the order Blastoidea, 

 has been founded by Mr. Billings, upon various fragmentary speci- 

 mens discovered in the , Chazy Limestone of the neighbourhood of 

 Montreal. He has named it Blastoidocrinus. A single species, B. 

 carcharicedens , has been determined. It is evidently related to the 

 genus Pentremites, and is chiefly interesting from its low position in 

 the rock series as a Blastoid, and as offering certain connecting char- 

 acters between Pentremites and the ordinary crinoids. Mr. Billings 

 believes that the column actually passes through the cup to the upper 

 part of the visceral cavity, the basal plates being so conformed as to 

 admit of this peculiar, and, indeed, abnormal structure. Two exam- 

 ples have been found with the cup thus penetrated by the column, 

 but some additional evidence seems necessary, viewing the fractured 

 and imperfect state of the specimens, to render this remarkable 

 conformation altogether free from doubt. Various new genera and 

 species of true crinoideae have also been established by Mr. Billings, 

 and are described in this Decade with great care and amplitude of 

 illustration ; but in the absence of the explanatory engravings it 

 would be useless to lay their characters before the reader. On these 

 engravings too much praise cannot be bestowed. The illustrations 

 of Decade III, moreover, have been executed entirely on Canadian soil. 



E. J. C. 



The Pomantic Scottish Ballads; their epoch and authorship. By 

 Robert Chambers, F.R.S.E. Edinburgh : W. & R. Chambers, 

 1859. 



In a recent review of Professor Aytoun's collected edition of the 

 ballads of Scotland, we drew attention to the interesting fact, that 

 many of the best songs and ballads of Scotland now traceable to their 

 authors, prove to be the work of Scotland's daughters ; and these 

 inckiding. not only pieces of such delicate and tender pathos as "Auld 

 Robin Gray," and "The Land of the Leal," but piquant satires and 



