. The testimony of the rocks; . edcorals, may be indicated in asingle sentence. The ancientcorals were stars of four rays, or of multiples of four; the modern corals are stars of sixrays, or of multiples of though, at a certain definiteperiod, — that during wliich thegreat Paheozoic division endedand the Secondary division be-gan— nature, in forming thisclass of creatures, discarded thenumber four, and adopted in-stead the number six, the greatleading idea of the star itselfAvas equally retained in coralsof the modern as in those ofthe more ancient articulata of the Silurian p
. The testimony of the rocks; . edcorals, may be indicated in asingle sentence. The ancientcorals were stars of four rays, or of multiples of four; the modern corals are stars of sixrays, or of multiples of though, at a certain definiteperiod, — that during wliich thegreat Paheozoic division endedand the Secondary division be-gan— nature, in forming thisclass of creatures, discarded thenumber four, and adopted in-stead the number six, the greatleading idea of the star itselfAvas equally retained in coralsof the modern as in those ofthe more ancient articulata of the Silurian period bore a still morepeculiar character. They consisted mainly of the Trilobites,— a family in whose nicely-jointed shells the armorer ofthe middle ages might have found almost all the contri-vances of his craft anticipated, with not a few besides whichhe had failed to discover; and which, after receiving soimmense a development during the middle and later timesof the Silurian period, that whole rocks were formed almost. OLYPTOCRINUS DECADACTYLUS. (Hudson River Group,Lower Silurian.) HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 89 exclusively of theii* remains, gradually died out in the timesof the Old Red Sandstone, and disappeared for ever fromcreation after the Carboniferous Limestone had been de-Fig. 48.
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