558 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



The crinoids from the Crawfordsville beds are remarkably well preserved. 

 They are evidently lying just where they lived, died and were buried in the 

 ocean ooze thousands of years ago. During all these ages, they have remained 

 undisturbed, so that the finest markings and most delicate tentacles and pinul^ 

 are perfectly preserved. And such is the nature of the matrix in which they are 

 imbedded, that with sufficient care, patience and skill, they may be so removed 

 as to restore the animal with all the parts entire. Such specimens are not only 

 very beautiful, but they also afford the very best opportunity for studying the 

 structure, nature and habits of these animals. 



It must not be inferred from what has been said, however, that all the speci- 

 mens obtained in these beds are perfect. So far from this being the case, proba- 

 bly not more than twenty per cent of the heads found are perfect, while an entire 

 crinoid, head, stem and root, of the larger species, is so seldom met with, that 

 the author in all his excavations, extending through several years, has never 

 found but one. That may be seen among the many other rare specimens, in the 

 museum of Wabash College. 



For more than two hundred years crinoids have occupied the attention of 

 scientists. During that time they have certainly received their full share of 

 attention. Agassiz tells us that up to his time not less than three hundred and 

 eighty authors had published their investigations upon the crinoids, and that 

 the books printed about these animals would furnish a library in themselves. 

 And to this we may add, that there are many questions connected with the sub- 

 ject still unsettled. 



The perplexity concerning the true nature of the crinoid commenced in the 

 sixteenth century. Small, round, flat stones with holes through them, and im- 

 pressions of little stars upon their sides, excited great curiosity. " What are 

 they?" was the question. The common people called them pulley-stones, and 

 St. Cuthbert's beads, and wore them for ornaments and used them for rosaries. 

 Scientists, puzzled and perplexed, called them trochites, from the Latin trochus, a 

 wheel. In process of time, beautiful impressions were found in the rocks, much 

 the same no doubt, as those found by the students of Wabash College along the 

 banks of Sugar Creek. These were supposed to represent fossil plants, and what 

 name more appropriate than Crinoid, from the Greek Krinon, a lily. In process 

 of time, this idea of the nature of the crinoid was still farther confirmed by the 

 discovery of a single specimen from Porto Rico, " described," as Professor Louis 

 Agassiz tell us, " by the naturalist Gueltard, which was so similar to the fossil 

 lilies of the rocks, that he called it a marine palm." 



The French naturalist, Cuvier, was the first to discover the true nature of 

 the crinoid. Careful study of the Trochites, the lilies of the rocks and the 

 marine palm, revealed to him the relation existing between them and the fact 

 that the crinoid was not a plant, but a marine animal of the sub-kingdom radiata, 

 and class Echinodermata. 



So striking is the resemblance between some species of the crinoid and some 

 kinds of plants, that, while the correctness of Cuvier's deduction is not ques- 



