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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



occupied by American observers, the mo- 

 ment of first contact was accurately ascer- 

 tained, despite a hazy atmosphere, and 13 

 photographs were taken. From Peking, 

 which is station 2 in Prof. Langley's charts, 

 we have as yet seen no report. At Nagasaki, 

 the observers met with complete success. 

 At Hobart Town, success was only partial ; 

 still 113 photographs were taken. The 

 party whose station, according to Prof. 

 Langley, was Bluff Harbor, New Zealand, 

 seem to have located themselves at Queens- 

 town, in that colony. Their observations 

 were very successful, and " 237 photographs 

 were made of the first contact." From the 

 remaining three American stations, viz., 

 Chatham, Kerguelen, and Possession Isl- 

 ands, no report has yet been received. 



Accounts from stations occupied by Eu- 

 ropean astronomers report entire success at 

 Cairo, Suez, Thebes (Egypt), Bushire (Per- 

 sia), Calcutta, Rurkee, Kurrachee (India), 

 Hiogo, Nagasaki, Yokohoma (Japan), Mel- 

 bourne (Australia), Hawaiian Islands (3), 

 and Tschita and Jalta (Russia). From 

 twelve stations total failure is reported, 

 and from seven partial success. The suc- 

 cess of the American party in New Zealand 

 is specially gratifying, as furnishing obser- 

 vations from a distant point in the South- 

 ern Hemisphere, to be compared with those 

 taken near the same meridian in the North- 

 ern Hemisphere. The observers in the 

 more remote islands of the South Sea 

 (Chatham, Kerguelen, Possession) are not 

 likely to be heard from for some weeks. 

 Arrangements have been made by the Brit- 

 ish Astronomer-Royal to have dispatches 

 from these islands forwarded at the earliest 

 possible moment. 



The zeal of the various governments in 

 equipping expeditions for observing this 

 transit is without parallel. Concerning the 

 part taken in this noble strife by the United 

 States, Nature observes as follows : " The 

 United States lead all the other nations in 

 respect both to the amount of money which 

 her Government has contributed, and of the 

 discomfort, not to say dangers, of the sta- 

 tions she has chosen in the southern seas. 

 Posts of importance, which were given up 

 as too hopelessly miserable even for enthu- 

 siastic English astronomers, have been oc- 

 cupied by Americans." 



Systematic Position of the Brachiopoda. 



The Brachiopoda is a class of animals 

 peculiar to the sea, and their remains fill 

 the rocks of past ages Their bodies are 

 protected by bivalve shells, which external- 

 ly bear some resemblance to the shell of 

 Anornia and other mollusks ; and most of 

 them live attached to the sea-bottom by a 

 sort of fleshy stalk or peduncle. It was 

 formerly believed that all Brachiopoda were 

 so attached ; but the genus languid, first 

 carefully studied in the living state by Prof. 

 Edward S. Morse on the coast of North Car- 

 olina, was found by him living free in the 

 sand. He published a brief account of his 

 discoveries in the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence and Arts ; and since then the late Dr. 

 Stolinsky, Director of the Geological Survey 

 of India, has confirmed his work by observ- 

 ing the same peculiarities in the large Lin- 

 gula anatina in the Indian Ocean. 



From the beginning, the brachiopods 

 have been unhesitatingly classed with the 

 mollusks neither Cuvier, Owen, Vogt, Han- 

 cock (whose remarkable memoir won for 

 him the gold medal of the Royal Society), 

 Huxley, Davidson, nor others who have writ- 

 ten on the subject, having even suggested 

 that they belonged elsewhere. After long 

 and industrious study, Mr. Morse, in 1870, 

 boldly announced, in the American Natu- 

 ralist, his belief that the brachiopods were 

 true annelidan worms, and had not the 

 slightest relation to the mollusks. Of 

 course, such revolutionary views were ut- 

 terly denied by the conchologists in this 

 and other countries ; nevertheless, Morse 

 persisted, and he now has the satisfaction 

 of seeing his discoveries indorsed by many 

 of the leading naturalists of the world. 

 From time to time since 1870 he has pub- 

 lished, in the "Proceedings and Memoirs 

 of the Boston Society of Natural History," 

 the results of his studies on the Brachiopoda, 

 and was the first to throw light on the em- 

 bryology and early stages of certain mem- 

 bers of this class. Last year, for the first 

 time, he gave a complete history of one of 

 its forms, from the egg to maturity, illus- 

 trating bis memoir by two steel plates, con- 

 taining over one hundred figures. The dis- 

 coveries there recorded fully vindicated the 

 position he had previously maintained, that 

 the brachiopods were annelids, and not mol- 



