560 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 



would never suggest the idea of a plant, and least of all a lily. The young 

 scientist named his first specimen " a petrified toad," and the resemblance is very 

 striking. He might have named another "a petrified chicken's claw" and he 

 would have had the scientific name in English, and a likeness even more striking 

 than in the first case. Who would ever think of calling the warty goniasteroido- 

 crinus with its long flexible stem coiled and knotted like a snake or some great 

 worm, and tapering to a perfect point — who would think of calling this thing a 

 connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms ? And how such 

 things as these are to anchor themselves to some stick or stone and maintain an 

 upright position is more than we can imagine. Very many species of crinoids 

 have nothing to resemble a root at the extremity of the stem. And where this 

 resemblance does exist, there is not the least evidence that they served any of 

 the purposes of a regular root. 



Of those spreading branches, budding and putting forth young crinoids "to 

 people old ocean," we find not the last evidence. The theory is doubtless a de- 

 duction from analogy. The testimony of the rocks upon this point is very 

 meager, but from the best evidence we can find we incline to the belief that 

 these Paleozoic crinoids were oviparous. 



Since the days of Cuvier, much time and attention have been given to the 

 study of these animals, especially their structure and classification. In form they 

 present almost an endless variety. Upon this point we quote the beautiful lan- 

 guage of Professor Louis Agassiz : "After thirty years' study of these fossil 

 crinoids, I am every day astonished by some new evidence of the ingenuity, the 

 invention, the skill, if I may so speak, shown in varying this single pattern of 

 animal life. -^ -^ -^ They seem like the productions of one 



who handles his work with an infinite ease and delight, taking pleasure in pre- 

 senting the same thought under a thousand different aspects. Some new cut of 

 the plates, some slight change in their relative positions is continually varying 

 their outline, from a close cup to an open crown, from the long pear-shaped oval 

 of the calyx in some, to its circular, or square, or pentagonal form in others. An 

 angle that is simple in one projects by a fold of the surface and becomes a 

 fluted column in another; a plate that was smooth but now has here a symmetri- 

 cal figure upon it drawn in beaded lines ; * * "^ . It 

 would require an endless number of illustrations to give even a faint idea of the 

 variety of these fossil crinoids." 



The limits of this article will admit only of a general description of the struct- 

 ure of these animals. The head, which in some species resembles a flower, is 

 really the body of the animal, and consists of a cavity or calyx composed of a 

 number of calcareous plates, joined together in the living subject by membran- 

 ous attachments. Within this cavity were enclosed all the vital organs. In 

 some instances the vault of this cavity is prolonged into a slender tube varying 

 in length in different species. The cavity of most crinoids is fringed with arms, 

 some simple, others branching, the number varying with the species. These 

 arms are also compoped of calcareous plates arranged in single, double or quad- 



