WOODWAED — ON ECHINOTHUEIA FLOEIS. 



327 



form is concerned, you may ignore the glacier altogether. It only 

 helps the torrent here and there by exposing a surface and by carry- 

 ing off the rubbish which the working water throws down ; but the 

 two sculptors are natural disintegration and the stream, and every 

 existing form in the Alps is distinctly traceable to one or other of 

 these forces combined with the internal geological structure." 



ON echinothuria flobis, a new and ANOMA- 

 LOUS ECHINODERM FROM THE CHALK OE KENT. 



By S. P. Woodward, F.G.S. 



The fossils represented in the accompanying Plate are probably only 

 fragments of the original structure, and possibly only the smaller and less 

 essential portions of the whole. Nevertheless I have determined to pub- 

 lish some account of them, although at the risk of committing an extrava- 

 gant error, as a last resort towards obtaining more complete examples or 

 suggestions for their more correct interpretation. 



Both specimens have been presented to the British Museum ; one by J. 

 Wickham Elower, Esq., of Park Hill, Croydon, the other by the Rev. 

 Norman Glass, of London. 



The first example (Fig. A) was obtained, at least sixteen years ago, from 

 the Tipper Chalk of Higham, near Rochester, and was submitted to Prof. E. 

 Forbes, in whose custody it remained for several years. It was originally 

 shown to me in connection with the anomalous Cirripede Loricula, then 

 newly discovered by Mr. Wetherell. The resemblance between them is 

 certainly curious ; but there is no real relationship. Mr. Flower's fossil ex- 

 hibits distinct traces of the crystalline structure peculiar to the petrified 

 Echinodermata, and the pairs of pores in the ambulacra! plates are equally 

 characteristic of the Echinidae. Mr. Darwin also has examined this fossil 

 and rejected it from his province of inquiry. 



Prof. Forbes could not make up his mind to describe the specimen, and 

 ultimately it was returned to Mr. Flower, with whom it remained until 

 the publication of a note on the genus Proto-echinus, by Major Thomas 

 Austin, in the ' Geologist ' for 1860 (Vol. III. p. 446), when it was entrusted 

 to me for the purpose of considering whether it had any special affinity 

 with this new type, and for description in the same journal. 



The Proto-echinus was obtained from the Carboniferous limestone of 

 Hook Head, Wexford, and is but a fragment of a single ambulacrum, con- 

 sisting of three series of plates at the wider end and two at the other ex- 

 tremity, with apparently a single terminal plate. Each plate is perforated 

 by a pair of pores. It differs from Echinothuria in every particular. 



