THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



AUGUST, 18 64. 



SEA LILIES. 



BY PROFESSOR WTVILLE THOMSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.G-.S., 



M.R.T.A., ETC., 



President of the Belfast Natural History Soeietj. 



(With a Tinted Plate.) 



Under a tall glass shade on the top of one of the Echinoderm 

 cases in Room II. of the northern Zoological gallery in the 

 British Museum, there is a beautiful plant-like organism, which, 

 from its prominence and style of mounting, seems to be held 

 of great account even in that room, into which all the sea holds 

 rare or beautiful among its urchins and sea-stars are con- 

 gregated. 



At a first glance one might imagine that some cunning 

 worker in mosaic had modelled a strange exotic lily, piecing 

 it together of thousands of minute symmetrical blocks of pale 

 yellowish terra-cotta. A tall stem, formed of a multitude of 

 rounded or slightly pentagonal joints, supports a shallow 

 plated cup, from whose rim there arises a crown of gracefully 

 curving arms. These arms divide and re- divide, and each divi- 

 sion is closely fringed on either side with smaller branchlets, 

 spreading from the arm like the barbs from the quill of a 

 feather. On the left-hand side of the door of the same room 

 there is a tall glass jar containing a specimen of the same 

 species in spirits, and on the right-hand side there is a glazed 

 case with two dried specimens hanging in it, resembling the 

 other two in general appearance, but so different from them in 

 many respects as to require to be placed in a separate sub- 

 generic group. 



These four specimens are of surpassing interest both to 

 the zoologist and to the jpalseontologist. They represent the 

 only two known living species of a group of the Echinoderms, 

 the stalked Crinoids, which lived in myriads, and passed 

 through a marvellous series of modifications in form, during 



vol. vi. — NO. I. B 



