140 Dr. W. B. Carpenter on Spirifer cuspidatus. 
2. Is there any reason for supposing that these shells have 
ever been perforated ? 
3. Do any traces of perforations exist in the fossil Rhyncho- 
nelle generally? (Of course I do not expect Prof. King to 
surrender Rhynchopora Greinitziana; but I speak of such types 
as th. acuta, octoplicata, and rostrata.) 
4. Is there any reason for supposing that these shells have 
ever been perforated ? 
If Prof. King does not yet feel himself able to give that 
direct and explicit negative to these questions, in which I 
have reason to believe that all other brachiopodists are agreed, 
it is to be hoped that he will feel it due to science to justify 
his affirmative conclusion by publishing the evidence on which 
it rests. If, on the other hand, he is now prepared to admit 
that which he formerly so unhesitatingly denied, I have fur- 
ther to ask :-— 
5. What appearances are presented by Mr. Davidson’s spe- 
cimen of Spirifer cuspidatus which place it in a different 
category from the foregoing as regards the supposed existence 
of perforations ? 
When Prof. King shall have given a plain answer to these 
questions, those who are interested in this subject will be able 
to judge for themselves whether the cnviseble perforations 
which he sees with his mind’s eye in Mr. Davidson’s specimen 
of Spirifer cuspidatus* are anything else than a delusion of 
that too vivid imagination which, twenty years ago, led him 
to assert their existence in Rhynchonelle and Spiriferide 
generally, and to doubt their absence in any Brachiopod 
whatever. And it will then be quite time enough to inquire 
into the validity of Prof. King’s observations upon Prof. Hark- 
ness’s and other specimens, detailed in his last paper. 
I may add that I possess sections of two Devonian species 
(Sp. speciosus and Sp. Verneuilli) in which the continuity of 
imperforate shell-structure is, if possible, even more distinct 
than in Mr. Dayidson’s specimen, in consequence of the entire 
absence of metamorphic change. These and any other of my 
* I rest the whole case of the imperforation of Spirifer cuspidatus upon 
this specimen, for two reasons,—first, that it has the best-preserved shell 
I have ever met with in a Carboniferous-limestone fossil; and, secondly, 
because Prof. King has examined this very specimen, so that there can be 
no question about the appearances which its structure presents. But 
the most careful examination of those appearances has only confirmed the 
statement I originally made, when the question was simply one of observa- 
tion, not involving any “strange morphological theory ”—that, “although 
the structure of this shell is often obscured by metamorphic action, I 
possess sections in which it is extremely well preserved, and in which 
there is an evident absence of the perforations.” (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1844.) 
