118 Beviews — Wachsmuth ^ Springer^ s Monograjjh on Crinoids. 



The value of a work like the present depends less on the number 

 of new forms it makes known, than on the care with which it 

 revises previous descriptions, confirms or rejects previous proposals, 

 and summarizes with lucidity the valid residue. It must have been 

 a disappointment more bitter to the authors than it will be to their 

 j-eaders, when they found that they could not make a monograph even 

 of so restricted a portion of the field either complete or authoritative. 

 Long years of labour in field and study, the accumulation of literature 

 in a Western town, the unwearying collection and comparison of 

 specimens new and old, all were deprived of their full and deserved 

 eifect when it was found impossible to examine a number of type- 

 specimens, and when, during the very years that the work was printing, 

 less careful or less learned writers were grinding out descriptions 

 of species with a truly indecent haste. It was found impracticable 

 to alter the manuscript to any great extent after it was first sent to 

 the printers on September 1st, 1894. Consequently it is very 

 important that all species published elsewhere between that date 

 and May, 1897, should undergo revision and comparison with 

 species first described in the Monograph. Till this is done and 

 till all type-specimens have been compared, we cannot look for 

 a standard list of North American Camerate Crinoids. 



The Systematic Part opens with a section headed ' Classification.' 

 With the broad lines of the classification of Crinoidea here proposed 

 I have dealt elsewhere,^ while previous chapters of the present 

 review have touched on minor details connected with the classifica- 

 tion of the Inadunata and Flexibilia. On the present occasion 

 attention may be confined to the treatment of the Camerata. 



The Camerata are defined (p. 169) as " Crinoids in which the 

 lower brachials take part in the dorsal cup. All plates of the calyx 

 united by close suture. Mouth and food-grooves closed. The top 

 joint the youngest in the stem." If such genera as Actinocrinus, 

 Coccocrinus, Idiocrinus, Heteocrinus, and JEnallocrinus are all to be 

 included in one Order, then one could hardly have a longer 

 diagnosis ; even as it stands, it is doubtful whether the criteria can 

 be applied throughout. For instance, it is only by stretching 

 a point that any brachials can be said to take part in the cup of 

 Coccocrinus ; one would not naturally suppose that the minute and 

 irregular interbrachials of Reteocrinidae were united by close suture ; 

 it is doubtful whether the food-grooves of the tegmen (which are 

 what the authors mean) were closed in Idiocrinus ; as for the last 

 of the characters, it may be constant, but it is said also to characterize 

 all Inadunata. 



Broadly speaking, no doubt, the essential features of the so-called 

 Camerata are the incorporation of brachials in the cup by means of 

 interbrachials and the rigid fixation of all calycal elements. But it 

 is admitted (p. 154) that these characters are essentially modifications 

 imposed on an Inadunate type, and it must further be conceded that 



1 ""Wachsmuth and Springer's Classification of Crinoids" : Natural Science, 

 xii, pp. 337-345; May, 1898. 



