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Much larger living Echini are found on this spot. There is a shell now, more than two inches in diameter. It is wholly covered with spines half an inch in length. Radiating from a common centre, flexible at the base, they stand erect at right angles with the shell when the Urchin is in health; but in disease or death order is lost, and they lie across each other in great confusion.
Among the molluscs and zoophytes, I found in the meshes of the net several species of alcyonarians, echini, hammers, spurs, dials, cerites, and hyalleae.
I did not doubt until lately that this mould was of purely terrestrial origin, when with a microscope examining some of it from the inside of a Concholepas from the height of about one hundred feet, I found that it was in considerable part composed of minute fragments of the spines, mouth- bones, and shells of Echini, and of minute fragments, of chiefly very young Patellae, Mytili, and other species.
During the year 1836, though pushing forward constantly the publication of the "Poissons Fossiles," his "Prodromus of the Class of Echinodermata" appeared in the Memoirs of the Natural History Society of Neuchatel, as well as his paper on the fossil Echini belonging to the Neocomian group of the Neuchatel Jura, accompanied by figures.
At Quail Island, the calcareous deposit is replaced in its lowest part by a soft, brown, earthy tuff, full of Turritellae; this is covered by a bed of pebbles, passing into sandstone, and mixed with fragments of echini, claws of crabs, and shells; the oyster-shells still adhering to the rock on which they grew.
In the same stone the claws of crabs, fragments of echini, and other signs of a neighbouring beach, are observed. Eunomia radiata, Lamouroux. Section transverse to the tubes. b. Vertical section, showing the radiation of the tubes. c.
Broderip has examined a similar collection, made during Captain Beechey's expedition, and ascertained that they consisted of ten recent species, associated with fragments of Echini, crabs, and Flustrae; some of these remains were estimated by Lieutenant Belcher to lie at the height of nearly a thousand feet above the level of the sea.
Towards the surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini. This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling, that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under consideration.
Superb specimens were secured, large boulders crowded with colossal shells and perfectly preserved echini. From the top of the cliff, looking inland, only a level plain was seen, stretching as far as the eye could reach, broken by no undulations, and covered with low, scrubby growth. The seine was drawn on the beach, and yielded a good harvest for the fish collection.
Of the echinodermes, remarkable for their coating of spines, asteri, sea-stars, pantacrinae, comatules, asterophons, echini, holothuri, etc., represented individually a complete collection of this group. A somewhat nervous conchyliologist would certainly have fainted before other more numerous cases, in which were classified the specimens of molluscs.
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