The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-19
THE LILIES OF THE SEA.
The Bed of Crinoids at Charlottesville,
and Prof. Bassetts's Investigations.
The World Renowned Reservoir of Paleozoic
Relics-What Is Known and Being
Found Out About the CrinoidS.

Written for the indianapolis Journal.
The writer had the pleasure last week of call
ing on Prof. d. A. Bassett, of Charlottesville,
the owner of the most extensive bed of crinoids
known in the universe The Professor has spent
the leisure of ten years in collecting. cleaning
and studying these remains, the most beautiful
and interesting that have been preserved in the
rocks
He has a special shop fitted with every device
known for cleaning and smoothing the rock and
compelling it to disgcrgs its precious treasures.
There is steam engine which revolves a
thick horizontal disk of iron, on which the
slabs are ground smooth; there is an
array of revolving brushes of hair and wire, by
which the dust is whirled away from them. The
Professor has expended So 600 for his
plant including the cost of the fossil bed. Eos
sis from the crinoid beds of Charlottesville now
enrich the cabinets of most OF the colleges ana
geological associations of the world. A line Sc
ries of them was burned with the museum OF the
State University, at Bloomington. Dr. Collect
secured the second best series for the State col
lection. while the cabinets of the new museum
and natural history building of Wabash
College-the best furnished and completest
in its collection of any college in
the Mississippi valley many type speci-
mems from these famous BEDS which to the en-
thusiastic geologist are worth more than ingots
of silver 1t is not to be supposed for moment
that Charlottesville would exchange their col
lege, of which the ''crinoid bluff" in question is
one of its scientific developments, for the entire
Comstock lode and there is no doubt but that
the names of Prof. e. o. Hovey, Dir. O. W.
Carey, Mr. E. II. Cary and Prof. d. A. Bassett,
who have spent years collecting and studying
these lily beds of the subcarboniferous sea,
will be remembered in the annals of Indiana and
in geological history for centuries to come,
when the furious and frothy politicians and Leg
islatures of their day will be only myth and a
legend.
The first crinoid found in this locality was picked
up, so the legend runs, by Rev. FL. G. Hovey
then q student of Wabash, and it may be sup
posed among the trundle- bed infants of the third
or fourth preparatory Glass; for he mistook it for
fossil toad" and so labeled it in his Juvenile
cabinet Other discoveries were made from
time to time in the bluff on the right bank of
Sugar creek, one mile north of the Village,
garded as an insult to speak of Charlottesville as
anything less than ''city" or a college town.
This bluff extends along the creek bank a dis
lance of thirty rods, cropping out toward the
northeast, and pitching under the creek toward
the southwest. All along this bluff were
formed impressions in the rocks, as
of a slender stalk, calyx singularly
marked as with rows or little dimples. and a
corallo of long slender petals with delicate
primate fringes. These were the moulds left in
the rocks by fossil crinoids. whose decayed
remains had been washed away.
Geologicaly these beds belong to the ''Keokuk
group of the observation-disclosures period. The rock
is an argillaceous shale, loose and broken at the
top, but more compact and Soildihed below. The
strata are of light lead color tinged with blue.
Poorly preserved crinoids are found in the first
fifteen feet of this shale; the next twenty feet
are barren and then come the workable beds.
The transition from the barren to the fossil
bearing rock is abrupt. The crinoids, Of which
hundred species have been taken from these beds,
seem to have lived In schools or clusters, crowded
together and lying upon one another in almost
inextricable confusion. Professor Bassett took
one slab from one of these clusters doubt
the richest crnoid species ever excavated by the
hand of Misunderstanding three feet by two and
one-half, in which there were eighty specimens of
crnoids, besides several other fossils of different
genera
bryoZoans, star fish, archimedes and others. The
crnoids, with their stems from few inches to
three feet long, crossing and recrossing In every
direction, were Embedded in a matrix of the
same material, and to remove this by chisel and
grayer, so to expose the fossil forms. was a
work of weeks, and requiring the greatest pa
fence. The artist sees the mystic form, so it is
said, imprisoned in the marble; he releases it by
ais genius. But the actual forms exist in
.hese rocks, and the genius that releases
HON 10 hat of
This remarkable slab was secured by Prof Ed
ward Cope, of Philadelphia, for his collection OF
Charlottesville crnoids. Another series is 60
ing to the University of California.
AS the best specimens are now forty feet un-
der ground and the bed pitches down under the
bluff, the labor of digging them increases and
must eventually cease because of the expense
Prof Bassett excavates through the summer
and spends the leisure Of the year cleaning the
fossils, and of late has been taking a series OF
plaster casts of some of the rarer and finer
Species of which only one or two specimens are
known. In this work he has been remarkably
successful, and his series of casts are fully equa
to any that Ward, of Rochester has produced
they scarcely distinguishable from
the originals. Among these casts
are several which from one tt
three feet long, and the only known
large specimens which show the roots which
held the animal in the mud, the stalk of hun
dreds of stellate disks like coins piled the
other, with the fower-like body at the top.
The lime skeletons, originally secreted by the
:rinoids, have been dissolved out and replaced
by the soft clayey shale of which the beds are
made; this will not stand the use of water or oil
and hence the great difficulty Of making casts,
which Prof. Bassett has SO successfully over
come. By these casts of the rarer and more
striking forms, and by duplicates of the abund
ant species, cabinets may still be supplied with
the crinoids of this region.
Prof James Hall, of New York, has described
number of new species from these beds. Tn,
State Geologist of Illinois, Prof A. HI. Worthen
aas described several species of crinoids from
these beds, and also sea urchins and star fishes
In our State geological report for 1875, DR.
Collett gives list made by the aid of Prof. E
o. Hovey and the ''most extensive worker Of
these beds, Mr.. L. H. Corey" whose name
'sCorey's Bluff, still attaches to the famous de
post now owned by Prof. Bassett. few othei
localities are found within radius of sever