No. 4.— A NEW FOSSIL STARFISH FROM 
NEW ENGLAND. 
By PERCY E. RAYMOND. 
The most striking fossil that has been found in Xevv England 
since the discovery, nearly a century ago, of Paradoxides harlani, 
has recently been acquired by the Boston Society of Natural 
History. It is a very well-preserved starfish, found by an 
enthusiastic student of natural phenomena, Mr. Olof O. Ny- 
lander, in a sandstone of Silurian age at New Sweden, Maine. 
The specimen is a natural mould, about one and one-half inches 
in diameter, and has a depth of from two to two and a half 
millimeters. The impression is that of the actinal surface, and 
is somewhat more distinct than one would expect in such a 
matrix. 
Although there can be but little doubt of the Silurian age of 
this specimen, the evidence is not complete, since it was found 
on the surface of a loose boulder which contained no other 
fossils. The matrix is a dense, fine-grained clay-rock with a 
calcareous cement. It weathers on the surface to a creamy 
white, beneath the surface it is reddish brown, and there is an 
unweathered kernel which is dark gray. Individual minerals, 
with the exception of rather numerous flakes of mica, cannot 
1)6 distinguished with the hand-lens. The unweathered portion 
reacts rather briskly to dilute hydrochloric acid; the outer 
shell not at all. 
Rocks similar to this have been reported by Williams and 
Gregory' in the Sheridan sandstone and Ashland shales which 
outcrop in the vicinity of New Sweden. It is probably the same 
as the "calciferous quartzitic sandstone" which according to 
Gregory (loc. cit., p. 138), is intcrbedded with fossiliferous 
shales in the northwestern part of that township. 
The Generic Reference. 
This starfish is one which, ten years ago, would have been 
described as a Palaeaster, but the recent work of Schuchert 
iBuU. U. S. Ocol. Survey, 190(), no. Ki:). p|.. 17 .".(). H<.>. i:;s. 
J Co 
