2g 
THE GEOLOGIST, 
reticulated fingers or rays, could be easily conveyed to it. But 
in this ^enus, tlie mouth being elevated above the rays, seems 
carefully put out of their reach ; and it is difficult to discover 
how the food was conveyed to it, except by supposing a great 
degree of flexibility in the long bony structure of the tube at 
the extremity of which the mouth is placed, and of the plates 
supporting it. These bony plates or ribs rise between each pair 
of raysj proceeding alternately from single and double plates. 
They reach nearly to the top of the rays in one soUd piece, 
where they are further continued by other plates of a similar 
substance, until they terminate around and immediately under- 
neath the mouth. The cross section shows that these ribs are 
of a wedge shape, and run in nearly to the centre of the spe- 
cimen, where they are united to a tube about one-eighth of an 
inch in diameter, and which is seen in the vertical section to 
connect the mouth with the stomach. Thus the plates which 
surround the mouth are supported upon a strong scaffold, com- 
posed of ten upright ribs, united together in the centre by the 
tube which connects the mouth with the stomach, and from the 
length both of this tube and the ribs as well, the mouth must 
have been kept out of the reach of the rays, except by supposing 
(as previously suggested,) that the whole of this curious struc- 
ture possessed a great degree of flexibility. The principal ob- 
jection to this is furnished by the apparent strength of this 
scaffolding, which is so strong, that in some specimens, where 
the pressure has been sufficiently great even to compress the 
sides of the stomach, the body of the encrinite has still pre- 
served its round form. 
The report proceeded to state that the curators were, however, 
now engaged in endeavouring to throw a greater light upon this 
curious point j and that, as the possession of so many specimens 
gave them an oppoi'tunity of carefully dissecting several, they 
hoped to be able, in a short time, to explain more satisfactorily 
than they can now do, the peculiar structure of this fossil. 
