8 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



flattened, but otherwise intact. Four show the rounded end, and one the side. 

 And this brings us to the next important fact: 



In not a single instance among the total of about 50 bulbs seen on all the 

 slabs is the stalk end directly exposed; in a few cases the bulb lies sidewise, 

 and indications of some of the root-branches may be seen at the edge; but in 

 no case is the stem directly traceable from a bulb in situ, although rarely frag- 

 ments of broken bulbs are found with the root-branches attached. This accords 

 with Schuchert's observations of slabs from West Virginia and Oklahoma; 

 but this fact in the light of the new knowledge we now possess leads to directly 

 the opposite conclusion from that which he deduced from it. For it must now 

 be recalled, as I have already emphasized, that these bulbs as we find them 

 are upon the under side of the layer, and therefore their rounded, non-stalked 

 ends, as they now appear after cleaning, were directed downward in their 

 actual position as originally imbedded in the mud. Hence they stood with 

 the stalked end uppermost, as they naturally would if growing in or resting 

 upon the soft sea bottom. 



I have no doubt that this was also the case with the specimens mentioned 

 by Mr. Schuchert. From long experience in collecting in manv formations, 

 I have observed it to be the general rule that whenever crinoids are found 

 adhering to a layer of hard limestone or chert, with the parts in relief bedded 

 in a seam of softer material, they are from the under side of the layer, and not 

 the upper; and their position as seen in the museum is exactly the reverse of 

 their original position in the layer, or on the sea bottom. This is perfectly 

 shown on all the slabs of Uintacrinus, as I have elsewhere described; 1 and I 

 have found the same to be the case with colonies adhering to cherty layers 

 in the Burlington and Keokuk beds, where the practice of collectors was always 

 to strip down to the layer so as to uncover it as much as possible, and then to 

 lift the slabs with pick or crowbar, expecting to find the crinoids on the under 

 surface. It was so at Beachler's great locality on Indian Creek, Indiana, where 

 over 3,000 finely preserved crinoids were obtained, most of them from the 

 lower side of the layer. 



The deposits of Pentacrinus at Lyme Regis, England, as described by 

 Buckland' in 1837, were made in the same way, the perfectly preserved 

 Pentacrinites, found only on the lower surface of the slabs, having been 

 " buried in the clay that now invests them," with a mass of stems above them 

 passing into a layer of lignite. There also, as here, " the greater number of 

 these stems are usually parallel to one another, as if drifted in the same direc- 

 tion by the current." 



1 Uintacrinus, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard, vol. 25, no. 1, p. 5, 1901. 

 'Geology and Mineralogy (Bridgewater Treatise), p. 437. 



