328 AMERICAN JOURNAL 



The author, for reasons g;iven, "reluctantly " concludes that 

 the above two species are identical. We can relieve his mind 

 by assuring him that they are very distinct, and that he has 

 apparently confounded with the carica other American species 

 in his vars. /? and y.^ 



On the jShell Structure of Spirifer cuspidatus, and of certain 

 allied Spiriferidce. By Wm, B. Carpenter, M. D. 



In the last issue of this Journal (vol. iii p. 201, 1867) we 

 nDticed a paper by Dr. Carpenter, on the shell structure of Spi- 

 rifer cuspidatus, published in the Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 London, Jan., 1867 ; and stated that he there emphatically 

 denies that this is a punctate shell, and says he thinks that the 

 specimens examined by Mr. Meek belong to another genus. Al- 

 though this is correct, so far as regards Dr. Carpenter's state- 

 ments in the paper noticed, he has since published another pnper 

 on this subject, from which it is evident that our notice of the 

 first one alone may, without further explanation, do both of these 

 gentlemen some slight injustice, by leaving on the minds of those 

 who may not see their papers the impression that there is a con- 

 flict of opinion between them, which is not the case, as may be 

 seen from the following statement of facts : 



In the first place, Mr. Meek published a paper in the Proc. 

 Acad. Nat. Sci. Philada. for December, 1865, p. 275, in which 

 he says he has found the shells of several American species very 

 similar to Spirifer cuspidatus, Sowerby (some of which were 

 formerly generally referred to that species), to show under the 

 microscope, by transmitted light, a distinctly punctate structure, 

 the punctures being very minute and irregularly scattering. He 

 also stated that, in the few examples of tliese shells of which he 

 had been able to see the interior, they were found to possess a 

 curious internal tube attached to the inner side of a kind of deep- 

 seated pseudo-deltidium, precisely as in a genus S^rinf/otlr/jris, 

 proposed by Prof. Winchell, for similar shells supposed by the 

 latter gentleman to be \^ithout traces of punctures. Mr. Meek, 

 however, sufrsrested that he was much inclined to think that 

 specimens of the typical Syringothyris, in a more nearly perfect 

 state of preservation than those examined by Prof. Winchell, 

 would yet be found to be punctate. 



Mr. Meek further states that, on examining a specimen sent 

 by Mr. Tliomas Davidson to Mr.Worthen, from Melicent, Ireland, 

 as a typical example of Spirifer cuspidatus, he found it to be 

 also punctate, like the American shells. He did not, however, 

 conclude from this that Dr. Carpenter had been mistaken in all 



* For a list of the species of Basycon, see Am. Jour. Conch, iii, p. 184. 



