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Updated: April 30, 2025
ECHINODERMS. The cystoid reaches its climax, but there appear now two higher types of echinoderms, the crinoid and the starfish. The CRINOID, named from its resemblance to the lily, is like the cystoid in many respects, but has a longer stem and supports a crown of plumose arms. Stirring the water with these arms, it creates currents by which particles of food are wafted to its mouth.
It is almost needless to say that these objects really were the plumose and flexible cirri which the barnacles throw out to catch their food with, and which lie, like a tiny feather-brush, just within the valves of the shell, when the creature is dead.
It is very curious to note that variegation is perhaps the most universally known anomaly, while its hereditary tendencies are least known. Cristate and plumose ferns are another instance. Half races or rare accidental cleavages seem to be as common with ferns as cultivated double races, which are very rich in beautiful crests. But much depends on cultivation.
Again, the barbs of the feathers in various widely-distinct birds are filamentous or plumose, as with some herons, ibises, birds of paradise, and Gallinaceae. Smaller feathers when thus denuded appear like bristles, as on the breast of the turkey-cock.
"Send him up then, Billy, and let's have some down." "That I just will," said the little sailor; and toddling to one of the most heavily-laden of the trees near, where the nuts could be seen pendent beneath the plumose leaves which glistened in the evening sun, he placed the monkey against the smooth-stemmed tree. "That's your sort," he cried; "up you goes, Jack, and shies down all the lot."
Thus top-knots have appeared in several species. In an extinct variety of the turkey, the top-knot consisted of bare quills surmounted with plumes of down, so that they somewhat resembled the racket- shaped feathers above described. In certain breeds of the pigeon and fowl the feathers are plumose, with some tendency in the shafts to be naked.
In the immense class of insects the sexes sometimes differ in their locomotive-organs, and often in their sense-organs, as in the pectinated and beautifully plumose antennae of the males of many species. In Chloeon, one of the Ephemerae, the male has great pillared eyes, of which the female is entirely destitute. Sir J. Lubbock, 'Transact. Linnean Soc. vol. xxv, 1866, p. 484.
Anemones are of many shapes, sizes, and colours. The loveliest of our British ones is the Plumose Anemone. It is like a carnation, and may grow to be six inches high that is, nearly as long as this page. It is known by its shape, not by its colour. It may be any of these colours brown, deep green, pale orange, flesh colour, cream, bright red, brick colour, lemon, or pure white.
The inner antennae bear, at the end of a basal joint sometimes of considerable length, on the inside a plumose seta, which also occurs in the Hermit Crabs, and on the outside a short terminal joint with one or more olfactory filaments.
In the first case are sulphurets of copper, and copper iron; in the second case are the series of sulphurets of lead, or galena, from various parts of the world; in the third case are specimens of sulphuret of bismuth, needle ore, or sulphuret of bismuth, copper, and lead, and sulphurets of mercury, or cinnabar, chiefly from Spain, the light variety of which is the bright vermilion used by artists; in the fourth case are the sulphurets of silver, the beautiful crystallised sulphurets of antimony, chiefly from Transylvania, and the delicate plumose antimony, or feather ore; in the fifth case are the sulphur salts, including the ruby, silver, &c.; and in the sixth case are the sulphurets of Arsenic, red orpiment, of which the best comes from Persia, cobalt glance, &c., bringing the series of sulphurets to a conclusion.
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