26 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
of the great peculiarities of tliis fossil is the presence of some 
curious slits or openings in the plates of which the body is com- 
posed. One of these slits is to be found m each of the four 
parts into which it is divided^ situated alternately in the upper 
and lower portions of the divisions. What purpose these open- 
ings may have answered it is difficult fully to understand_, but 
they are evident in all the specimens known^ and must have 
performed some important function in the animal economy of 
the living individual. This fossil differs both from the pen- 
tremite and encrinite, in being divided into four parts instead of 
five. 
In addition to these specimens — valuable as extending our 
knowledge of a genus so recently discovered^ and possessing so 
many peculiarities — several entirely new species of encrinites 
were also described in the report. One of these is a remarkably 
fine specimen, and being entirely detached from the matrix, 
shows the general character of the fossil very beautifully. It 
must have belonged to a large species, and its chief distinctive 
mark seems to be in the unusual breadth of the rays where they 
proceed from the upper plates of the body. Another must have 
belonged to a species by no means so large as the last, but it 
possesses several striking peculiarities, especially in the strength 
of its plates, and the curious cup-like shape which they assume 
where the arms proceed from them. It is altogether a remark- 
able specimen. Besides these, a specimen of another new spe- 
cies was noticed ; though decidedly different from any previously 
known, it was not however considered sufficiently peculiar to 
require any detailed notice. 
The specimens of encrinites hitherto discovered in the forma- 
tions of Dudley have disclosed very little of the interior struc- 
ture of the fossil ; this was the more to be regretted, because 
belonging to that peculiar class of zoophytes which seem to form 
a connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
any insight into their interior anatomy would have been of great 
