DERBYSHIRE MARBLE. 



651 



In the quarries on Middleton Moor, a short distance from 

 Cromford, in Derbyshire, extensive quarries of this marble 

 are worked, and abundance of these fossils are everywhere 

 scattered about. The cavities of the entrochites are often 

 filled with white calcareous spar, while the ground of the 

 marble is of a dark reddish brown. In other varieties the 

 substance of the fossils is white and the ground dark grey or 

 brown: both kinds when worked into polished slabs or 

 ornaments, are very beautiful and interesting. A specimen 

 of the limestone with the crinoideal columns in relief, is 

 represented Lign. 146, fig. 1 ; and a polished slab in fig. 2. 



41. The lily encrinite. — One of the most elegant of 

 the fossil crinoidea is the Lily Encrinite, which, as already 

 stated, occurs only in the Muschelkalk of the Triassic system 

 of Germany (ante, p. 549), and is principally found in one 

 locality, near the village of Erkerode, in Brunswick. The 

 structure of this zoophyte is beautifully exemplified in the 

 fine specimen before us (Lign. 124), which was formerly in 

 the collection of Mr. Parkinson. The stem of this species 

 is remarkable, from being constructed of ossicula alter- 

 nately large and orbicular, and small and cylindrical, thus 

 forming a column of great flexibility, The pelvis resembles 

 in shape a depressed vase ; the upper part of its cavity 

 appears to have been closed by an integument protected by 

 numerous plates, the mouth of the animal being situated 

 near the centre. 



It will elucidate this subject if we examine this specimen 

 of a Marsujrite, in which the bases of two of the arms are 

 preserved (Lign. 147). A vertebral column attached to 

 the central plate, at the base of this crinoidean, would 

 convert it into an Encrinite; and in the large expanded 

 plates of the receptacle, and the strong and simple ossicula 

 of the arms, we have the elements of the more complicated 

 J^and highly ornamented fabric of the Lily Encrinite. In an- 

 other specimen of Marsupite (now in the British Museum) 



