20 GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 



3. 071 the Cystidea (« new family of radiated animals)^ introduced 

 hy an Account of the Caryocrinus ornatus, Say. By Baron 

 Leopold von Buch, For. Mem. G.S., &c. 



[From the Transactions of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Beriin.] 



(Plates III. and IV.) 



In the year 1825, there appeared in the * Journal of the Academy 

 of Natural Science of Philadelphia' (vol. iv. p. 9), an account of a 

 genus of Crinoidea, specimens of which had been obtained (through 

 Dr. Bigsby) from Lockport, on the Lake of Ontario, in the state of 

 New York, and which proved to be altogether distinct from all 

 known crinoidal forms. 



This description, prepared by Thomas Say, one of the most acute 

 of the American naturalists, and accompanied by a figure, was re- 

 published in the autumn of the same year in the ' London Zoological 

 Journal' for October, and the name Caryocrinite has since been 

 admitted amongst the genera of Crinoidea, although the distinctive 

 peculiarities of the genus have hardly attracted notice. De Blainville, 

 in his ' Actinologie' (p. 263, Atlas, pi. 29. ^g.b), gives only a meagre 

 and incomplete description of it, and refers to a figure (taken from a 

 specimen in his possession) by no means equal in clearness to that 

 given by Say. Bronn also, in his 'Lethaea Geognostica' (p. 64), 

 gives a short description, and acknowledges that he has not even 

 seen a figure of the fossil. Since then, Castelnau, in his ' Essai sur 

 le Systeme Silurien de I'Amerique Septentrionale' (Paris, 1843), has 

 given another representation (pi. 25. fig. 2), in which the plates and 

 ambulacral pores are indeed shown better and more distinctly than 

 in preceding figures ; but the essential points are not given, for we 

 neither find any trace of the insertion of the arms (the small upper 

 plate appearing entirely to inclose the animal), nor can we discover 

 in what part the aperture of the mouth is to be sought for. The 

 accompanying description leaves the matter in the same state of ob- 

 scurity ; for although M. de Castelnau has established a multitude of 

 new species, he has merely in each case given the name, not stating his 

 reasons for putting forward these names, and still less accompanying 

 them with a proper description. 



To this incompleteness it must be attributed that so accurate and 

 careful an observer as M. de Verneuil has thought it necessary to 

 identify the Caryocrinus ornatus with a species from St. Petersburg, 

 described by me under the name Hemicosmites pyriformis^ ; and 

 he considers that as one of the two names must drop, that given by 

 Say ought of course to be adopted with reference to the Petersburg 

 fossil f. 



The conviction that it was impossible to group together, not 



* Beitrage sm- Kenntniss der Gebirgsformationen in Russland, p. 32. 



t In the ' Survey of the Fourth Geological District of New York/ by James 

 Hall (Albany, 1843), received at the end of 1844, there is given the best and 

 clearest figure of Caryocrinus ornatus hitherto pubHshed, exhibiting very cor- 

 rectly tlie arrangement of the plates ; but this figure is not accompanied by a de- 

 scription, and many of the most remarkable points of symmetry in the distribu- 



