. The testimony of the rocks; . inthese four great ideas, as the unchanging and unchangeableOne. They serve to bind together the present mth all thepast; and determine the miity of the authorship of a won-derfully complicated design, executed on a groimdworkbroad as time, and whose scope and bearing are deep aseternity. The fauna of the Silurian System bears in all its threegreat types the stamp of a fashion peculiarly antique, andwhich, save in a few of the moUusca, has long since becomeobsolete. Its radiate animals are chiefly corals, simple orcompound, whose inhabitants may have somewhat re
. The testimony of the rocks; . inthese four great ideas, as the unchanging and unchangeableOne. They serve to bind together the present mth all thepast; and determine the miity of the authorship of a won-derfully complicated design, executed on a groimdworkbroad as time, and whose scope and bearing are deep aseternity. The fauna of the Silurian System bears in all its threegreat types the stamp of a fashion peculiarly antique, andwhich, save in a few of the moUusca, has long since becomeobsolete. Its radiate animals are chiefly corals, simple orcompound, whose inhabitants may have somewhat re-sembled the sea-anemones; with zoophites, akin mayhap tothe sea-pens, though the relationship must have been aremote one; and numerous crinoids, or stone lilies, someof which consisted of but a sculptured calyx without petals,while others threw off a series of long, flexible arms, thatdivided and subdivided like the branches of a tree, andwere thickly flinged by hair-like fibres. There is great 88 THE PALiEOXTOLOGICAL Fig. CYATHAXONIA DALMANI. Fig. 47. variety and beauty among these Silurian crinoids; and, from the ornate sculpture oftheir groined and ribbed cap-itals and slender columns^ theGotliic architect might borrownot a few striking ideas. The difFarence between theolder and newer fashions, asexempliiied in the cup-shapedcorals, 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,—
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