8 Sea Lilies. 



stalked Crinoids which are met with, living in the seas of the 

 present period. So far as we yet know, these are the only 

 remaining representations of the vast assemblage of widely- 

 varying types which thronged the seas of past ages, with the ex- 

 ception, perhaps, of a species of Bourgueticrinus, a singular 

 genus, whose remains are found abundantly in the white chalk, 

 and of which a few joints are said to have been recovered from 

 deep water in the W est Indian seas. I shall conclude the present 

 communication with a brief sketch of the curious zoological 

 relations which these forms bear to the free Crinoids, the 

 feather- stars. Comatula rosacea is the most common British 

 species. It is found abundantly in Lamlash Bay, in Arran, 

 in Belfast and Strangford Loughs, in Dalkey Sound, in Kirk- 

 wall Bay, and generally distributed, though less abundant, in 

 deep water all round the British and Irish coasts. In general 

 structure it resembles very closely the head of Neoceinus 

 decorus. The cup is formed nearly the same way, and of 

 corresponding plates, only the basal plates do not show 

 externally, and the first row of the radials are also concealed, 

 so that the cup seems from the outside to consist of only one 

 row of radial plates, succeeded immediately by the radial 

 axillaries. At this point, as in Neocrinus, the arms bifurcate, 

 but they divide no further, so that the arms are finally ten in 

 number. The arm-joints are sharply wedge-shaped, and the 

 pinnules are arranged as in the other species. As in Neocrinus, 

 the arms are broken up by irregularly-placed syzigies. Coma- 

 tula has no stem, but in the position of the stem, and forming 

 the base of the cup, there is a hemispherical plate covered 

 with rows of cirrhi, exactly like the stem-cirrhi in the stalked 

 forms. This plate represents the stem, or rather the cirrhus- 

 bearing joints of the stem condensed and fused together. The 

 cirrhi are flexible, and evidently, to a certain extent, under the 

 control of the animal. 



The Comatula, when at rest, holds on by them to a stone 

 or weed, spreading out its beautiful, feathery, crimson arms, 

 like the petals of a flower. "When it chooses, however, it can 

 let go its hold and swim rapidly through the water by grace- 

 ful impulses of its arms. In spring, the hundreds of ovaries 

 scattered over its pinnules are turgid with eggs, and if at this 

 time it is captured, and placed with some sea- weed in a tank, 

 bunches of bright orange eggs are protruded from all the 

 openings of the ovaries, where they hang in clusters, giving 

 the delicately pinnatic arms the appearance of the fronds of 

 some wonderfully graceful fern in rich fructification. 



The phases passed through by the rising generation before 

 they come to resemble their parent in form and mode of life, 

 are of extraordinary beauty, and most instructive in determin- 



