Reviews — Wyville Thomson's "Depths of the Sea." 221 



Fig. 4. Pentacrinus asteria, Linnseus, one-fourth 

 the natural size. (From fig. 70, p. 43C.) 



the whole order seems to 

 have been worsted in 

 the 'struggle for life.' 

 Thej become scarce in 

 the newer Mesozoicbeds, 

 still scarcer in the Ter- 

 tiaries, and up to within 

 the last few years only 

 two living stalked Cri- 

 noids were known in the 

 seas ofthe present period, 

 and these appeared to be 

 confined to deep water 

 in the seas of the An- 

 tilles, whence fishermen 

 from time to time bring 

 up mutilated specimens 

 on their lines. Their ex- 

 istence has been known 

 for more than a century ; 

 but, although many eyes 

 have been watching for 

 them, until very lately 

 not more than twenty 

 specimens had reached 

 Europe, and of those only 

 two showed all the joints 

 and plates of the skele- 

 ton, and the soft parts 

 were lost in all. 



" These two species 

 belong to the genus Pen- 

 tacrinus, which is well 

 represented in the beds of 

 the Lias and Oolite, and 

 sparingly in the white 

 Chalk, and are named 

 respectively Pentacrinus 

 asteria, L.,andP. Mulleri, 

 Oersted. Fig. 4 repre- 

 sents the first of these. 

 This species has been 

 known in Europe since 

 the year 1755, when a 

 specimen was brought to 

 Paris from the Island 

 of Martinique, and de- 

 scribed by Guettard in 

 the Memoirs of the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences. 



