ZOOPHYTES. 203 



No. 3 is a specimen of a rai'e fossil, which we hesitate about 

 classing with this family, as the stalks of this sort present no appear- 

 ance of internal organization, being all in the state of spar. In one 

 of the few specimens which we have met with, and which are all 

 from the Malton oolite, there is a kind of bulb or root, considerably 

 thicker than the stalks, but of no regular shape ; and from thence 

 five or six stalks have spread out in various directions, as appears 

 from their mutilated remains. The stalks, which in all the specimens 

 are round like those of encrinites, are plain and smooth towards this 

 root ; but at the distance of an inch from it, they begin to assume 

 that beautifully zoned appearance represented in the figure ; being girt 

 with belts alternately elevated and depressed, at regular distances, 

 and the elevated zones being each surmounted with a row of tubercles 

 or short spines. In what these singular stalks have terminated, we 

 have not been able to ascertain. We find them running for several 

 inches in the oolite, but have not traced them to any thing like a 

 bead, the specimens shewing only detached portions of stalks or 

 columns, partly straight, and partly bent. The thickest of the 

 columns are half an inch in diameter ; and all of them are of a brownish 

 colour without, and consist of a dull whitish spar within. This spar 

 splits obliquely, the faces of its crystals being neither parallel to the 

 axis of the column, nor perpendicular to it, but crossing it at an angle 

 of about 45°. This oblique disposition of the crystals, or laminae, 

 prevails in almost all the sparry petrifactions. 



Along with these nondescripts, we may notice another uncom- 

 mon fossil, delineated in Plate VI, Fig. 11. It is about the size of 

 one of the largest hazel nuts, which it greatly resembles in shape. 

 The upper, or conical part, is not round, but has three angular pro- 

 jections, or ridges, extending from the apex to the base, and nearly 

 equidistant. The base would be almost flat, were it not that these 

 three ridges are continued across it, meeting in an elevated point in 



