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tracted into a body of a similar form. The fossil referred to is de- 
scribed “ as the ramified arms of the head of an encrinus, closed up 
together. From the cabinet of Mr. Francombe ; found at Pyrton 
Passage, Gloucestershire.” 
In the several species of encrinites, whose superior parts have been 
sufficiently perfect to allow of their examination, it has appeared that 
the ramifications or fingers were given off in so regular and uniform a 
manner as to render them capable of being closed exactly together ; 
the projecting parts all fitting into corresponding depressions on the 
opposite parts. In the pentacrinites, on the contrary, the branches 
not appearing to be given off with such regularity, and being at the 
same time extended to a considerable length, and amply supplied 
with lateral processes or tentacula, which are also very long, there 
does not appear to be reason for supposing that they were capable of 
being contracted into a compact assemblage, bearing a regular form, 
similar to those of the different species of encrinites. 
But in this fossil, which is evidently a pentacrinite, since a pentagonal 
asteria is depicted as still adherent to its base, ten arms proceed from 
its pentagonal base, much in the same manner as in the lily and cap 
encrinite. These arms also bifurcate somewhat in the same manner 
os is observable in the arms of those fossils ; the divisions, however, 
more closely resembling the divisions which take place in the arms 
of the cap encrinite ; a first division taking place at about the third 
articulation, and the fingers which are thus formed being repeatedly 
subdivided in a dichotomous manner. The whole of the arms and 
fingers, although so repeatedly separated, as is shewn in the figure, 
evidently possessed the power of so contracting themselves, as thereby 
to acquire a regular and determined form. We are, I think, lully 
warranted in considering this fossil as the superior termination of the 
Gloucestershire pentacrinite. 
