227 
As Mr. Donovan possessed a more perfect specimen of the fossil 
remains of this animal, than I could procure, I requested and ob- 
tained of him the following accurate description from the ticket 
which accompanied his specimen. 
“ The Tortoise Asterio Encrinus, an animal partaking of the nature 
of marine crustaceous creatures. It is composed chiefly of sixteen 
angulated pieces or plates, of which five pentagonal ones surround 
the mouth, in the upper edge of each of which is a semicircular notch, 
from which depends a jointed arm or tentacula, which is dichoto- 
mous after the first two joints, and is probably again divided and sub- 
divided towards its extremities. Those arms were, no doubt, designed 
by nature to assist in taking its food. Immediately under these five 
plates are five other hexagonal ones ; and below these, five more that 
are pentagonal, and the bottom is terminated by a single pentagonal 
plate. All the plates fit closely into each other in the same manner 
as the scales of a tortoise, so that no interstices appear, and these are 
radiated from the centre to the edges ; the upper plates with four 
or five rays each, the rest with six rays each : from the sides of these 
ridges proceed lesser ones, terminating at the edge, and giving them 
a pennate appearance. The plate from which the branched arms 
proceed, are not so much striated between the larger rays as the other. 
In some plates, the striae are broken, and form a rugose surface. The 
plates vary in their markings in different individuals, and even in the 
same specimen, some are coarsely ridged, or rayed ; some finely 
ridged, or rather striated, and some are nearly smooth. The body 
does not seem capable of extension. Found in a chalk-pit, in Surrey.'^ 
Mr. Ingham ForsteFs Museum, O. 98. 
Whilst attending to the forms, as well as to the different markings 
of the plates of which this animal is composed, you will not tail to ob- 
serve some similarity with those of the encrinite just examined, and 
designated by the term Nave Encrinite. One material difference, 
