Miscellaneous. 77 
fallen in my way, and which I have had the honour of presenting to 
the British Museum, was brought to me when residing at Funchal in 
the month of February last. It was said to have become entangled 
in a fishing line, and to have been brought up from a considerable 
depth near Ponta do Pargo, the south-west extremity of the island. 
It was attached to a stone on which a small specimen of Dendro- 
phyllea ramea, a not uncommon Madeiran coral, was seated. It has 
a height of 6 or 7 inches, and it measures about 10 inches across. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
Investigations of the living Brachiopoda of the Mediterranean. 
First Memoir: on Thecidium. By M. Lacaze Duruters. 
Tue Thecidia, fixed by the convex face of the concave valve, only 
move the dorsal or apophysary valve. Four muscles serve to lower 
the latter and close the shell. There are two to open it ; they form 
the innermost pair. The separation of the valves is active, and the 
abductor muscles act as the power of a lever of the first order. 
The arms would resemble in many respects those of other Brachio- 
poda, if they were not adherent to the mantle all along their basal 
ridge. D’Orbigny’s expression of abrachiopodes, applied to the 
Thecidia is entirely false : indeed, what is a Brachiopod without arms ? 
The cirri present two very distinct structures :—a cortical layer, 
which is soft and easily destructible—the cellular envelope ; and a 
hard, resistant, and nearly cartilaginous axis, which is the frame- 
work. They differ a little in the two sexes; these differences will 
come into consideration in connexion with the reproduction. 
The mouth occupies precisely the same situation as in the other 
Brachiopods. In all, in fact, the arms are united by the are of a 
circle—a true, more or less concave horseshoe, which they form by 
becoming confounded on the median line ; and it is at the bottom of 
this curve at the middle that we see the buccal orifice, always in front 
of the ridge, the base of the arms, and the insertion of the cirri. 
The stomach is surrounded by the two packets of ceca which con- 
stitute the liver. The intestine presents a very curious peculiarity, 
already indicated by MM. Hancock and Huxley in the Terebratule. 
It terminates in a delicate ligament, and presents no anus. Examin- 
ation by the lens, and even under high powers of the microscope, 
left no doubt upon this point. 
Behind the mouth, above the are formed by the base of the arms, 
there is a nervous centre composed of ganglia, from which issue 
numerous nerves passing to the two lobes of the mantle and other 
parts of the body. 
The sexes are separate. The testes and the ovaries only exist in 
one lobe of the mantle—that corresponding to the deeper or inferior 
valve. The two testes, like the two ovaries, are hidden beneath sup- 
plementary osseous plates developed in the thickness of the mantle. 
The spermatozoid is very small, with a very delicate tail and a 
