219 
and hexagonal plates. The upper part of the conical end is wrought 
round with six large hexagonal plates, and these reach half-way the 
stone ; then follows a second round, made up of eleven pentagonal 
plates, pretty large, and these reach almost to the broad bottom, which 
is a little convex, the bottom itself and feet contain plates of all makes, 
but most of them are very small."' 
Mr. Beaumont calls them, with Mr. Lister and Ray, Rock Plants, 
and adds, “ we may truly say that there have been and are whole 
fields or forests of these in the earth, as there are of coral in the Red 
Sea."’ 
“ I must own (Mr. Beaumont says) the knowledge of its being a 
radix to Mr. Lister's hint, though 1 have Agricola by me, but did not 
well mind him; and because the perfect radu' was smooth on the 
top, and many other pieces of radixes which I have by me, they did 
not well indicate the thing, though upon a review I find one of them 
with small rays there."’ Mr. Beaumont thus designates the particular 
fossil, of which he has given a figure. “ A curious radix, somewhat 
more entire than elsewhere to be found, on which those rock plants 
sometimes grow, though it be manifest that they often grow also from 
plain roots."* 
Both Mr. Lister and Mr. Beaumont have supplied the Philosophical 
Transactions with figures of these bodies ; that furnished by the 
latter gentleman being exceedingly correct. But entertaining a direct 
contrary opinion respecting this fossil, from that which these gentlemen 
were led to adopt; believing that, instead of its being the base 
or radix of the entrochus, it is the summit of the column, or the 
pelvis, from which the arms, fingers, and tentacula of the animal 
proceeded, and which was supported by the trochital column, it became 
necessary to represent it in a reverse position to that in which it had 
been placed in those figures. I therefore availed myself of the polite 
and prompt assistance which 1 have always received during my re- 
* Philosophical Transactions, Vol. X. 
