NATURE 



25 



THURSDAY, MAY 



1892. 



BRACHIOPODS OF THE ALPINE TRIAS. 

 Jirachiopoden der Alpinen Trias. Von A. Bittner. 



Abhandl. d. k. k. geologischen Retchsansialt, Bd. xiv. 



4to, 325 pages, 41 plates, and numerous zincotypes in 



the text. (Vienna: A. Holder, 1890.) 

 OOOKS on Triassic fossils, helping as they do to 

 -L' bridge over the gap in our knowledge of those life- 

 forms that led from the ancient times to the middle 

 ages of earth-history, will always be welcomed by both 

 geologist and biologist, especially when, as in the fine 

 work before us, they show signs of wide learning and 

 elaborate research, and are accompanied by such figures 

 and diagrams as place their stores of information within 

 easy reach of all. 



The Triassic rocks and Brachiopods best known to 

 English collectors, and indeed to geologists in general, 

 through the writings of Miinster, v. Klipstein, and Laube 

 on the one hand, and Suess and Zugmayer on the other, 

 are those of the St. Cassian argillaceous beds and of the 

 Hallstatt limestone. Besides these, the Brachiopods of 

 the Alpine Muschelkalk have been largely worked out by 

 Schauroth and Boeckh. In addition to those from these 

 well-known horizons, Mr. Bittner surveys the Brachiopod 

 faunas from a large number of other beds, including the 

 Rhaetic, few of which beds have been systematically 

 worked before, but all of which may be compared with 

 those of the above-mentioned better-known types. 



Mr. Bittner has divided his work into two parts : the 

 first, of 287 pages, being devoted to the description of 

 species and the comparison of faunas ; the second deal- 

 ing with the morphology and distribution of the several 

 genera. It will be convenient to follow a similar order 

 in this article. 



Part I. follows primarily a stratigraphical, and second- 

 arily a topographical arrangement, so that the species are 

 described under various faunas. In one place, however, the 

 author stops to give us two interesting essays, one on his 

 new genus Halorella, the other on the Triassic species 

 of Rhynchonella, both of which should by rights have 

 come in the second part of his work. 



The descriptions are based chiefly on materials in the 

 Museum of the Geologische Reichsanstalt and the Hof- 

 museum in Vienna, although a very large number of 

 other collections — private and public — have been con- 

 sulted by the author. Among these, however, we fail to 

 notice the British Museum, which contains many of 

 v. Klipstein's types. Mr. Bittner, it should be men- 

 tioned, invites collectors and others to send him all their 

 material, and promises to determine the species carefully 

 and to describe any new ones. The present volume is 

 sufficient guarantee that the work will be carefully done. 



It may well be imagined that the task set before our 

 author was no light one. There appear to be 398 species 

 of Brachiopods in the Trias of the Alps, and of these 216 

 are named for the first time in this work. But we 

 wish that Mr. Bittner had made his book a little more of 

 what one expects it to be from its size and scope — namely, 

 a monograph of the Brachiopods of the Alpine Trias. 

 NO. 1 1 76, VOL. 46] 



Such a monograph would have included a diagnosis, if 

 not a figure, of every species of Brachiopod known to 

 occur in these beds ; it would have summarized the litera- 

 ture of the subject, and it would have shown at a glance 

 under each species in what beds and at what localities it 

 occurred. Such a work, which need not have been a 

 page longer than the present, would have been worth a 

 library to students of these fossils. The author, however, 

 has elected merely to crowd our shelves with one more 

 book, and not even a book in the highest sense of the 

 word. He has unfortunately not thought it necessary to 

 give even descriptions of previously named species, unless 

 he has something new to say about them, while his whole 

 volume is innocent of any serious attempt at a diagnosis. 

 Here is an example — no unfavourable one — of his 

 method : — 



" Rhynchonella Attilina, nov. sp." 

 "A small Rhynchonella occurring in numbers, which 

 at first sight reminds one of the above-described Rh. 

 trinodosi m. The simplest examples are very near that 

 species and easily confused with it." 



He then goes on to contrast R. Attilina with R. trino- 

 dosi, point by point, for twenty-seven lines, and so ends 

 without any independent description of his new species, 

 and with nothing to say how it differs from the ninety 

 other Triassic species of the genus, not to mention the 

 rest. And there are many worse instances than this. 



We are aware that Mr. Bittner is by no means the 

 only offender in this respect ; were he so, our complaints 

 would be unnecessary. He is merely an example of a 

 body of writers, far too numerous in our own country, 

 who seem to have the notion that this sort of thing is 

 science. It is what science has to put up with, and if 

 possible to make science out of; but there is generally 

 about as much science in it as in an auctioneer's catalogue. 

 The writers in question seem never to have heard of 

 Linnaeus. Had they studied his writings, they would 

 understand that, for systematic purposes, the diagnosis is 

 everything, that every new species described often necessi- 

 tates a re-diagnosing of all other species in the genus, 

 and in many cases involves a fresh diagnosis of the genus 

 itself. Were this appreciated, fewer synonyms would 

 disgrace our lists. 



To return to Mr. Bittner, whose work is after all more 

 scientific than that of most of these name-mongers. It 

 is noticeable that he, as a rule, gives no measurements, 

 leaving it to readers to gather these from the plates. The 

 task of calculating average measurements is of course 

 irksome ; still it is often possible to compare species more 

 accurately by their means than by any other. 



Neither does our author ever take the trouble to infonn 

 us of the meanings of his trivial, or even generic names. 

 "Why R. trinodosi?" we ask, and infer — though from 

 nothing under the head of the species itself— that it is 

 due to the association of the species with Ceratites trino- 

 dosus. But there are many names that still remain to the 

 present writer unsolved enigmas : such are S. pia, 

 S. avarica (unless this means avaricensis), and R. gene- 

 rosa. It is also rather difficult to understand why three 

 species of Rhynchonella, all from the same district, should 

 be called A', cimbrica, R. teutonica, and R. venetiana. 

 We venture to think, however, that the climax of nomen- 

 clatural aberration is reached in such a name as " Ko- 



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