134 
The American Geologist. 
March, 1896 
in some of the older forms mouth and ambulacra were subteg- 
minal. 
It was in 1873 that Prof. Agassiz, on his return from the 
Pacific coast, paid a second visit to Burlington. He was 
greatly surprised at its enormous growth since he had last 
seen the collection and, struck by the beauty and perfection 
of the specimens, he intimated that he was anxious to pro¬ 
cure the collection for Cambridge, and expressed a desire to 
have Mr. Wachsmuth go with it arid take charge of all the 
crinoids in the museum there. The negotiations were soon 
completed, and a few months later, Mr. Wachsmuth was in¬ 
stalled in the Museum of Comparative Zoology as an assistant. 
It was Prof. Agassiz who induced him to publish the results of 
his observations under his own name, on the ground that he 
was doing an injustice to himself by placing them in the 
hands of others. The position, which was held until the 
death of Prof. Agassiz, gave ample opportunity to become 
fully acquainted with the literature on the crinoids, and it was 
here that the foundation was laid of a classification which di¬ 
vides all Paleozoic crinoids into three primary groups, based 
chiefly upon the structure of the tegmen. These groups w'ere 
sketched out in 1877 in a paper “ On the Internal and External 
Structure of Paleozoic Crinoids/’ and they are now recognized 
as primary divisions with the rank of order. 
On returning from a second trip to Europe and a visit to the 
Orient, in 1874, Mr. Wachsmuth found not a single specimen 
in his possession. It took only a few years, however, to make 
up another collection that was larger and much superior to 
the first. A year or two later he made the acquaintance of 
Mr. Frank Springer, then a young lawyer at Burlington, and 
an enthusiastic student of the natural sciences. A friendship 
soon sprung up between them. They studied together, and 
from 1878 the results of their researches were published under 
joint authorship. In the following year the collections in¬ 
creased rapidly by extensive purchases, and on a trip to 
Europe Mr. Springer brought home a fine selection of Dudley 
crinoids, embracing nearly all the species of that locality, and 
a large lot of the Carboniferous species of England and Ire¬ 
land. Among his acquisitions were also the rarer forms from 
Belgium, a majority of the Eifel species, fine specimens from 
