316 EDWARD S. MORSE ON 



HABITS. 



The meagreness of observations on living Brachiopoda is somewhat surprising when 

 one considers the ease with which abundant material of certain species in life may be 

 obtained. Without a study of the living animal it is impossible to realize the activity of 

 the lacunal circulation, the extreme mobility of various parts of the organism, the 

 beautiful colors of the soft parts, and the varied and graceful attitudes of the brachia. 



Many of these animals may easily be kept alive ; indeed, with the Ecardine forms, 

 the vitality manifested by them is almost beyond belief. I brought home in mid-summer, 

 from North Carolina, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles, living specimens of 

 Glottidia. These were kept in a small food bowl. They were afterwards carried to 

 Eastport, Maine, and then to Troy, New York, yet none of them died until late in the 

 fall, six months after. I also brought back from Japan a number of specimens of a small 

 species of Lingula and not one of these died until late in the year. Joubin ('86) 

 recounts a like vitality in Crania. 1 One cannot help associating this remarkable vitality 

 in these genera with their persistence through geological horizons from the Cambrian to 

 the present day almost unchanged in character. Living as they do in shallow seas, the 

 gradual elevation or subsidence of the coast-line would in no way affect their condition. 

 Temperature alone has probably caused their disappearance from the more northern 

 regions, but otherwise, they have survived all the invitations of geological times 

 unchanged, and with the persistence of this vitality, they may be the last forms of life to 

 survive on the earth as they were among the earliest preserved. On the other hand, the 

 Testicarcline brachiopods do not possess this vitality, and this group has shown an infinite 

 diversity of form since its first appearance in geological time. 



Glottidia pyramidata? This sound genus established by Ball, to which I shall add 

 further generic distinctions, was found living in great numbers on Bird Shoals, Beaufort 

 Harbor, North Carolina. The tides in this region are very small and these shoals are 

 exposed at low tide. For collecting these animals, as well as many other sand burrowers, 

 I devised a large hand-dredge in the form of a dust-pan with closely perforated bottom. 

 With this device I scooped up the sand and sifted it at the same time, often securing, at 

 one scoop, twenty or thirty individuals. The external appearance and behavior of these 

 small diaphanous Lmgulae are so alike that when I first began the study of Lingula lepi- 



1 Joubin says "The Crania remained exposed, upon my table, to the sun, cold, heat, without being injured. Numerous 

 algae had invaded my basins. I had left them entire months without changing their water which ought to have acquired a 

 strong saltness. I have still the greater part of my Crania living seven months after their arrival in Hoscofi and fourteen 

 months after their gathering." 



2 1 shall retain the specific name of pyramidata for this species until its anatomy is shown to be identical with that of 

 Glottidia antillarum, which name it now bears. 



