THE CRAWFORDSVILLE CRINOIDS. 559 



tioned, the idea has for a long time prevailed that the crinoid is really two-fold 

 in its nature, animal and vegetable combined, thus constituting a connecting 

 link between the two kingdoms. According to this idea, the crinoid was a 

 marine animal-plant, whose house was in the bottom of the sea, where, with its 

 roots anchored in the mud, or ooze, to some rock, stone or stick, it grew, budded 

 and sent forth branches which developed into young crinoids. Such is the idea 

 advanced by a writer in Harper' s Monthly iox February, 1879. "The true animal 

 plants however," he remarks, "are without doubt crinoids or stone lilies. With 

 them the resemblance is almost perfect, to the minutest particular. They re- 

 semble a flower borne upon a stem terminating in an organ called a calyx, which 

 is, properly speaking, the body of the animal. Branches issue from the main 

 stem, which at its base bears a sort of expanding root planted amid the rocks, and 

 capable of growing by itself and nourishing the stem." The same idea has been 

 more elaborately and poetically stated elsewhere. 



According to this, the natural position of the crinoid is vertical, its roots 

 buried in the mud and firmly anchored to some solid support. " In this way 

 they lived and grew and flourished like beds of roses or other flowering shrubs. 

 The extremities of the branching stalks budding, bloomed into young crinoids 

 which after a time, having grown somewhat strong, cut loose from the parent 

 stock, and floating off, roamed at pleasure through oceans depths until satisfied 

 with this roving mode of life, and being more perfectly developed, it too settled 

 down as its ancestors had done, and fastened its roots among the rocks, or in 

 the mud, and there grew, and expanded its branches and put forth buds, and 

 bore its crop, and sent out its progeny to assist in peopling the depths of old 

 ocean. Those long stalks enabled the head to sway and move about within a 

 certain distance, and with its long slender arms with their feathered pinulas to 

 seize the unwary minnow or star-fish or mollusk which happened to stray within 

 its reach." 



This is the poetry of science. Very beautiful, and attractive. Such was 

 the crinoid the writer expected to find as he commenced excavations in these 

 Crawfordsville beds eighteen years ago. But those dreams have never been 

 reahzed. After years of delving and most careful search after what we fully be- 

 lieved to be a reality, we are reluctantly led to the conclusion that whatever may 

 be found in other deposits, no such fossil exists in this. As we have read the 

 description of the crinoid as written by nature herself in these rocks, it differs 

 materially from the fancy sketch above. 



We find no evidence of a dual nature in the crinoid — animal and plant com- 

 bined — a connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. This idea 

 has no doubt originated in the striking external resemblance of some species of 

 crinoids to certain plants, and especially to the lily. But this resemblance, even 

 in the most striking cases, is only external, while the internal structure in every 

 instance is entirely different. 



Furthermore this resemblance, instead of being general as many suppose, is 

 really of rare occurrence. Most species of crinoids in their external appearance 



