263 
LETTER XXVI. 
OPINIONS AND DISCOVERIES RESPECTING THE LIVING ANALOGUES 
OF THE PENTACRINITES. 
TT HOSE who admitted the presence of animal life in the recent ana- 
logue of the pentacrinite, divided themselves into the supporters of 
two opinions. The one considered the whole of the encrinus, or pen- 
tacrinus, as belonging to a single individual animal, and place the 
mouth in the centre of the base of the pelvis, supposing the rays 
which are disposed round the pelvis to be so many arms which are 
used by the animal to convey its food to its mouth, and the projecting 
parts proceeding from the little cavities in the vertebrae as the instru- 
ments of motion. The others consider this body as a mass of as 
many separate polypes as there are articulations. The learned Hofer 
adopted the latter opinion, in his Tentamen de Folyperitis* He re- 
presents the formation of such an assemblage of polypes, to which, 
when it has become a subject of the fossil kingdom, we give the name 
of Encrinite, to take place in the following manner. When one of 
these polypes, clothed with its testaceous covering, happens to be torn 
and separated from those to which it was united, the waves drive it 
from one side to another, until it happens to fix itself by its arms to 
* Act. Helvet. Tome IV. P. 182. 
