170 



THE GEOLOGIST, 



to have served as one of the scavengers of the deep — removing and assimilating 

 the half decomposed animal-matter that would otherwise have proved injurious. 



" While the Pentacrinite thus floated or waved about ... the oysters of 

 that time were planting themselves at intervals; and the Terebratula and 

 Spirifers . : . appear to have found ample food in these seas swarming with 

 life."* 



The stony skeletons of these Encrinites lie almost always parallel, cross- 

 wise to the lines of bedding; and the successive "forests" seem to have 

 spread their roots down and among the dead and decaying masses of a bygone 

 race, and following each other to have built up the calcareous soil on which 

 future generations lived. As in a forest of pines, where the underwood grows 

 at will, we see many a diminutive plant spring up only to die before its natural 

 term of existence is complete — crushed by the grosser and more rapid de- 

 velopment of the underwood — so in that ancient sea the forests of towering 

 Encrinites would tolerate an undergrowth of smaller species ; but below these 

 was no maturity for the millions who began to live, but were forced to yield 

 before the gross and rapid growth of their taller neighbours. Their dead 

 remains in the vicinity of the full-grown encrinites tell a tale not to be misun- 

 derstood : they speak a language to the geologist ; may be a language he alone 

 is privileged to interpret. 



As the limestone lies in its natural position in the quarry, you may observe 

 certain intersections parallel and perpendicular to the lines of bedding. The ver- 

 tical ones filled with calc, so regular in its " infillings," that one could imagine 

 that it formed a part of the stone in its original bedding ; the others with a 

 dark brownish clay, which is nothing more than the debris of the argillaceous 

 components of the stone caused by continued dampness. The last are the 

 " bottoms" of the quarrymen, and when the tabular masses are turned up and 

 exposed to the action of the weather, the structure of the encrinital stems is 

 distinctly visible : a calcareous stem, jointed with ring-like layers about the 

 sixteenth of an inch in thickness. Each of these thin layers are marked with 

 rays, which branch, vein-like, as they recede from the centre. I know nothing 

 more beautiful or perfect than these fine rays on some of the larger stems of 

 the encrinite. In all carboniferous limestone districts they have arrested the 

 attention of even the most careless observers. The quarrymen and stone- 

 breakers have told me that these markings have received more notice from 

 them, on account of their peculiar minuteness, than the very curious " cockles" 

 {spirifers and producti) so frequently met with. Is it strange that these 

 should have attracted the notice of the early Britons, so fond as they were of 

 ornaments, or even the prying eyes of the Roman warriors ?f Well might the 

 nuns of Lendisferne call the broken stems of the encrinite the beads of St. 

 Cuthbert, and couple them with his memory; and Scott has shown his usual 

 acumen in seizing the incident for a picture in his "Marmion." 



" But fain St. Hilda's nuns would learn 

 If on a rock by Lendisferne 

 St. Cutrbert sits, and toils to frame 

 The sea-born beads that bear his name. ' 

 Such tales had Whitby's fishers told, 

 And said they might his shape behold, 



And hear his anvil sound. 

 A deadened clang, a huge dim form, 

 Seen but and heard, when gathering storm 



And night were closing round." 



, n * Ansted's "Geology," " Circle of the Sciences," p.p. 110-111. 



t Or. MaateU slates that he has found quantities of these perforated ossicula, which had 

 "em worn as ornaments, in tumuli of the ancient Britons. " Miller's Popular Geology," p. 137. 



