6 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



All this was accomplished by Mr. Braun with perfect accuracy and without 

 the slightest mishap ; and it is a pleasure to record my appreciation of the care 

 and skill with which, under many adverse conditions, he performed this diffi- 

 cult and laborious work. 



Some of the specimens were partially exposed upon the slabs as first taken 

 out, but it was necessary after their arrival at the National Museum to clear 

 away the adherent clay with fine tools before their contents could be fully seen 

 or intelligently studied. Furthermore, the interbrachial spaces were filled with 

 a more or less hard calcareous matrix composed of innumerable arm and 

 pinnule joints forced down between the arms and firmly cemented by pressure 

 from above; this had to be removed by patient chipping to expose the interesting 

 structures in the region of the arm-bases. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SPECIMENS 



The surface after removal of the clay seam was found to be in many 

 places completely covered with the crowns and stems of a very large Scypho- 

 crinus. The principal slab (PI. I) is 47 by 65 inches in size, and contains 24 

 crowns, 18 of them complete and several with the stem attached for part of 

 its length ; some have the calyx fairly rotund, but most of them are considerably 

 flattened and often much distorted by contact with the bulbs described below. 

 All have the strong, many-branched arms more or less intact, often to a length 

 of 12 inches, densely fringed with exceedingly fine pinnules, which are so 

 delicate that they are not often exposed in good condition by cleaning. The 

 distal ends of arms are so slender and fragile that they are nowhere fully 

 preserved, but from measurement of the smallest brachials and calculation 

 of the taper of the terminal branches as far as seen, it is certain that the arms 

 were at least 18 or 20 inches long. The calices are remarkably regular in size, 

 measuring about 4J to 5 inches from base to the upper limit of fixed plates. 

 Besides these crowns several sets of arms are partly visible belonging to calices 

 which are entirely buried either under other individuals or in the limestone 

 matrix which becomes firm and hard a short distance inward. Some parts of 

 the slab are covered with a dense mass of stems lying parallel like stalks of 

 grain in a sheaf, and many of the crowns lie with their arms pointing in the 

 same direction, as if they had fallen over into the mud at the same time under 

 the common impulse of a gentle current. The deposition of the specimens, 

 however, was not wholly free from disturbance; some of them lie crosswise, 

 and most of the stems are more or less broken ; in some closely contiguous parts 

 of the bed the crowns are much broken, the calices crushed and separated from 

 the arms. The fossils are mostly rather light colored, and with the darker 

 matrix for a background they present a very striking appearance. 



