Crinoid

“ It is the more desirable that all these fossils should be made known, as the family of crinoids is so reduced in our days that we can form no idea of the living animals of that group, of their diversity of form, modification of character, and peculiarity of position, from the living type only. He doubted whether the number of crinoid heads of all species found in Europe, now existing in the Museums of Europe, is one-third the number of those which have been found by a single gentleman in Tennessee in one morning. ”

“ The houses were all roofless inclosures of walls, and their substance being, as he afterwards saw, of phosphorescent bones, gave the place an appearance as if it were built of drowned moonshine.
Among the inner caves of the place waving trees of crinoid stretched their tentacles, and tall, slender, glassy sponges shot like shining minarets and lilies of filmy light out of the general glow of the city. In the open spaces of the place he could see a stirring movement as of crowds of people, but he was too many fathoms above them to distinguish the individuals in those crowds. ”

“ When disturbed, the pinnules of the arms first contract, the arms straighten themselves out, and the whole gradually and slowly closes up. It was a very impressive sight for me to watch the movements of the creature, for it not only told of its own ways, but at the same time afforded a glimpse into the countless ages of the past, when these crinoids, so rare and so rarely seen nowadays, formed a prominent feature of the animal kingdom. ”

“ Crinoids flourished here in such numbers that beds of limestone 150 feet in thickness are built practically of crinoidal remains and nothing else. The time represented was long enough to allow of a series of modifications of such extent that the crinoid fauna of the Upper Burlington is very distinct from that of the lower beds of the same formation, while the fauna of the Keokuk differs from both. Here again the paleontologist is favored, not only with a wealth of material, but with an opportunity to note the trend and tendency of things. ”

“ In them the ab-oral region, which has such a remarkable predominance in the Crinoid, has become depressed; it no longer extends into a stem, nor does it even rise into the calyx-like or cup-like projection so characteristic of the Crinoids,—though, when the animal is living, the ab-oral side of the disk is still quite convex. The disk in the Ophiurans is small in comparison to the length of the arms, and perfectly circular; it does not merge gradually in the arms as in the Star-Fish, but the arms start abruptly from its periphery. ”

“ Fossil Crinoidea.—The fossil crinoids, like the recent prototype above described, consist of an articulated column, and a receptacle formed of calcareous plates, and articulated arms or tentacula. They constitute two groups; the Encrinites, in which the ossicula of the column are subcylindrical and smooth; and the Pentacrinites, with a stem composed of pentangular ossicles, as in the living Pentacrinus. ”

“ If now you were to cut off its stalk, lay the crinoid on the sand, mouth down and arms outspread, beside a brittle star or a basket fish, which also have many-branched arms, it might be difficult to tell them apart, yet they represent different orders; and from this, by way of the naked serpent star, it is but a short transition to the starfish, where the arms are no longer tentaclelike, but are simply pointed extensions of a central body ”

“ On examining their cavities he will find them to be simply hollow casts of innumerable joints of Crinoids, so exquisitely preserved, even to their most delicate markings, that it is plain they were never washed about upon a beach, but have grown where, or nearly where, they lie. ”

“ Nor were the ancient crinoids less remarkable for the amount of nice contrivance which their structures exhibited, than the ancient molluscs or crustaceans. In their calyx-like bodies, consisting always of many parts, we find the principle of the arch introduced in almost every possible form and modification, and the utmost flexibility secured to their stony arms by the amazing number of the pieces of which they were composed, and the nice disposition of the joints. ”

“ Here, again, we have a natural gradation of a series of progressive types. Again, among crinoids, we find, in the older deposits, a variety of species resting upon a stem, while free crinoids begin to appear only during the secondary deposit and prevail, in the present creation, over those attached to the soil. Here, again, we have a series of progressive types developed successively, which are apparently independent of each other and seem to bear no other relation to each than that arising from the general character of the group to which they belong. ”

“ The law enunciated by Beecher and quoted by Professor Woodward in his address before the geological section of the British Association at its meeting in Winnipeg last summer, is well exemplified in the Mississippian history of this particular group of crinoids. The tendency among any division of skeletal-bearing animals to run to extravagant ornamentation in the way of ribs, nodes, spines or other excesses of dead, useless, skeletal matter, is something that precedes and presages the decline and death of the race. ”

“ The classification of Crinoidea cannot properly be considered without taking account of fossil forms, but to do so at all adequately is impossible on account of limitations of space. Less regret may be felt because the three specialists in this branch, viz. Bather in England, Springer in America, and Jaekel in Germany, come to fundamentally different conclusions on the subject. If we confine our attention to living forms we may, with P. H. Carpenter, [515] select the stem as the basis of classification. ”

“ The Crinoidea are characterized by having a fixed base, a column or stem composed of numerous separate articulated pieces of a solid calcareous substance, supporting on its summit a vase, or receptacle, formed by a series of closely adjusted plates, which contain the body, or viscera. The upper part of the receptacle is covered by a plated integument, on one side of which an aperture or mouth is placed. From the upper margin proceed five articulated tentacula or arms, which subdivide into branches that in some species are very numerous and of extreme tenuity. ”

“ Of the five Orders, Beches-de-Mer, Sea-Urchins, Star-Fishes, Ophiurans, and Crinoids,—or, to name them all according to their scientific nomenclature, Holothurians, Echinoids, Asteroids, Ophiurans, and Crinoids,—the last-named are lowest in structure and earliest in time. Cuvier was the first naturalist who detected the true nature of the Crinoids, and placed them where they belong in the classification of the Animal Kingdom. ”

“ Such a creature has more the aspect of a flower than of an animal; yet it is really an animal, and subsists by collecting with its arms and drifting into its mouth minute creatures floating in the water. Another group, less typical, but abundantly represented in the Silurian seas, is that of the Cystideans, in which the body is sack-like, and the arms few and sometimes attached to the body. They resemble the young or larvaa of crinoids. In the modern seas the crinoids are extremely few, though dredging in very deep water has recently added to the number of known species ”

“ These crinoids live, for the most part, on diatoms, small crustaceans, and other tiny sea creatures which they first paralyze with poison from the tentacles which line the grooves of the arms through which food is carried to the mouth.
Cave-Dwelling Birds
True creature of night is the guacharo, or “oil bird”, of northern South America. It is reddish-brown, about the size of a barnyard hen. Excessive layers of fat built up about its abdomen formerly were valued highly by natives for eating purposes, resulting in the slaughter of countless thousands every year. ”

“ Of more than thirty species of Crinoïdeans that prevailed to such enormous extent in the Transition period, nearly all became extinct before the deposition of the Lias, and only one presents the angular column of the Pentacrinite; with this one exception, pent angular columns first began to abound among the Crinoïdeans at the commencement of the Lias, and have from thence extended onwards into our present seas. Their several species and even genera are also limited in their extent ”

“ The dominating trilobites, sea-scorpions, and tetracorals of the Paleozoic had disappeared, while the brachiopods and crinoids were greatly modified and more like the forms which live today.
Crinoids became moderately abundant at various times, but in many ways different from their relatives of the preceding era. Some of the largest known species, with stems estimated as fifty feet long, have been found in lower Jurassic rocks. A great abundance of microscopic life is indicated by the frequent occurrence of chalk in the Cretaceous formations. ”

“ When we consider the profusion of care, and exquisite contrivance, that pervades the frame of every individual in this species of Pentacrinite, forming but one of many members, of the almost extinct family of Crinoïdeans—and when we add to this the amount of analogous mechanisms that characterize the other genera and species of this curious family,—we are almost lost in astonishment, at the microscopic attention that has been paid to the welfare of creatures, holding so low a place among the inhabitants of the ancient deep ”

“ Their structure and relations were first elucidated in an essay published by Von Buch at Berlin in 1845. They are usually met with as spheroidal bodies covered with polygonal plates, with a mouth on the upper side, and a point of attachment for a stem b (which is almost always broken off) on the lower. (See fig. 433.) They are considered by Professor E. Forbes as intermediate between the crinoids and echinoderms. The Sphæronites here represented (fig. 433.) occurs in the Llandeilo beds in Wales. [358-A]
Fig. ”

“ The story of the creodonts—savage marauders large and small—includes the rise of the powerful order Carnivora—the beasts of prey, whose food is the flesh of other animals. There always has been, and always will be in every department and rank of animal life, some or many species that live by preying on their neighbors; and every living thing, from monad to man, has to fear such enemies. ”

“ It was formerly a general belief that if a man on horseback killed one of these animals with a spear, the poison would run up the weapon and kill, not only the rider, but the horse as well. To this dreadful monster the effluvium of the weasel is fatal, a thing that has been tried with success, for kings have often desired to see its body when killed; so true is it that it has pleased Nature that there should be nothing without its antidote. The animal is thrown into the hole of the basilisk, which is easily known from the soil around it being infected. ”

“ I looked again; its open mouth was now within an inch of the lizard, which by this time seemed utterly paralysed and motionless; the next instant its head was drawn into the snake’s mouth, and by degrees the whole body disappeared, as the reptile gorged it, and I could perceive from the lump which gradually moved down the snake’s neck, that it had been sucked into its stomach. Involuntarily I raised my hand, when the whole suddenly disappeared.
I turned, I could scarcely tell why, to look at the dying girl. A transient flush had again lit up her pale wasted face. ”

“ Growls, snarls, shrieks, and roars came out in a demoniac chorus from a confused mass of swirling leaves and dust; limbs, teeth, claws, blood, and springing bodies, as though ten fighting beasts instead of two were combating amidst a whirlwind! I became so excited that I could scarcely command myself. A crash, as of smashing large bones, and a horrible shriek! The noise and fury of the combat were redoubled for a minute or two! Then came a pause! The dust and cloud of leaves subsided. The lion was uppermost. The left arm of the gorilla was across his tremendous mouth. ”

“ I will content myself with saying that they were engaged in a most astonishing contest, and inflicted serious wounds upon each other; for sometimes the more strong, sometimes the mere weak, they were at the same time conquerors and conquered. The animal, which many supposed to be a basilisk, was all swollen from head to feet, and the poison circulating throughout its body, and flowing through all its members, gave it a colour greener than that of frogs,—a colour of death. ”

“ In a dense swarm, blackening gray clothes, giving dark ones a strange spotted appearance, they settle down and creep slowly about, looking for an unappropriated spot from which to suck blood. They creep noiselessly and without being felt to the unprotected face and neck, the bare hands and the feet covered only with stockings, and a moment later they slowly sink their sting into the skin, and pour the irritant poison into the wound. ”

“ It may be known by dark spots down the back. When we speak of venomous serpents, we mean those whose bite is to be dreaded, because it conveys a tiny drop of poison, which mingles with the blood, and often causes intense anguish, ending in death. In poisonous serpents, the venom lies in a little bag at the root of a long sharp tooth, pierced by a narrow tunnel, through which, at the moment when the bite is given, the poison flows into the wound. If these poison-fangs—one on each side—are taken out, the bite of the most dangerous serpents becomes harmless. ”

“ Among the stories Kinnesasis told them, as handed down by his forefathers, the following is perhaps the most interesting:
"Long ago there were great monsters on this earth. Some of them were enormous animals and fiercer than any that now exist. Then there were magicians, and other evil spirits, like windegoos, some of whom were tall, giant cannibals, that filled the people with terror. They lay in wait and caught the children, and even the grown-up people, as the wild beasts now catch their prey. ”

“ Kringen
I've walked the streets of this village for over 40 years, but tonight's the end. He knows that I've told he plays with bats. He knows that I saw him sneak into Martha's house just before midnight.
Doctor von Niemann
Perhaps he was taking her another flower, Kringen. The boy brought her one this evening while I was there.
Kringen
He killed her just like he did all the rest! And now he's going to kill me! Unless he's killed with a stake driven through his heart, I'm a doomed man! He'll kill me! He'll kill me! I'm doomed! He'll kill me! He'll kill me! I'm a doomed man! He'll kill me! ”