170 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
to have served as one of the scavengers of the deep — removing and assimilating 
the lialf decomposed animal-matter that would otherwise have proved injurious. 
" "\7hile the Pentacrinite thus floated or waved about . . . the oysters of 
that time were planting themselves at intervals ; and tlie 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 
futiu-e 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. Iheir 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 tlie 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 ' iwnish clay, which is nothing more than the debris of the argillaceous 
comp^ xxcnts 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 notliing 
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 produdi) 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 Ff 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 pictui-e in his " Marmiou." 
" But fain St. Hilda's nuns would learn 
If on a rock by Lendisferne 
St. Cuthbert sits, and toils to fi-ame 
Tlie sea-lorn heads that bear his name. 
Such tales had Whitby's jfishers told, 
And said they migM his shape beheld, 
And heai' his anvil sound. 
A deadened clang, a huge' dim form, 
Seen but and heard, when gathei-ing storm 
And night were closing round." 
, _ * Ansted's "Geology," " Circle of the Sciences," p.p. 110-111. 
T Ur. Mantell states that he has found quantities of these perforated ossicula, which had 
Deen worn as ornaments, in tumuli of the ancient Britons. " Miller's Popular Geology," p. 187. 
