Reviews — Beecher and Clarke— Silurian Brachiopoda. 173 



growth, the septa are at first all of the same size and show a radial 

 instead of a pinnate arrangement. Even in some specimens of 

 Prisciturben, in which the calices have an upright mode of growth, 

 the septa are fairly regularly radiate, without a pinnate or bilateral 

 disposition. 



Whilst the calices in Prisciturben exhibit all the characters of 

 ordinary Rugose Corals, the substance in which they are imbedded, 

 described by Kunth as coenenchyma, shows in section a porous 

 structure. This, on being submitted to Prof. H. A. Nicholson, was 

 recognized by him as Stromatopora typica, v. Eosen, a characteristic 

 Wenlock form occurring in England and Russia. It thus appears 

 that Prisciturben, instead of being an abnormal Perforate Coral allied 

 to the recent Turbinaria, really consists of two different organisms, 

 a Stromatopora and a species of Cyatliopliyllum, which lived together, 

 not always in harmony, as Lindstrom remarks, but rather in conflict, 

 since in some specimens the Stromatopora grew at the expense of 

 the Corals and nearly choked them, and in others the Corals were so 

 numerous that there was little space left for the development of the 

 Stromatopora. The interesting facts relating to these fossils are 

 clearly shown in the figures which accompany Prof. Lindstrom's 

 lucid descriptions. H. 



II. — The Development of some Silurian Brachiopoda. By 

 Charles E. Beecher and John M. Clarke. Forming vol. i. 

 No. 1 of the Memoirs of the New York State Museum, pp. 95, 

 8 lithographed plates and 4 woodcuts. (Albany, 1889.) 



WITH the completion of Davidson's great work on the Brachiopoda 

 one might have been inclined to believe that very little more 

 remained to be done with a group of shells upon which so much 

 elaborate research had been expended, and with such splendid results. 

 But we see in the volume before us how much of the life-history of 

 the Brachiopoda yet remains to be written. Upon some of the living 

 members of this group important treatises have from time to time 

 appeared ; notably that by Prof. E. S. Morse 1 on Terebratulina ; 

 another by Mr. W. K. Brooks 2 on Glottidia, and another by Dr. 

 L. Joubin ; 3 while M. Eugene Deslongchamps has treated of the 

 development of the deltidium in the articulated Brachiopods. 

 But as to the developmental history of fossil Brachiopods the 

 field was quite open, and we are glad to see it occupied by 

 such able and zealous workers as are the authors of the present 

 volume. The results recorded by them could scarcely have 

 been arrived at without the aid of rather exceptional circum- 

 stances ; these were the following. A large collection of fossils 4 



1 Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. ii. " On the Early Stages of Terebratulina 

 septentrionalis, pi. i. figs. 2, 3, 1869. 



2 Johns Hopkins University ; Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory. " The Develop- 

 ment of Lingula and the Systematic Position of the Brachiopoda," pi. i. and ii. 1879. 



3 Archiv. de Zool. Experim. torn. iv. p. 16.1, 1886. A convenient abstract of this 

 memoir has been given by Miss Agnes Crane in an appendix to the late Dr. Davidson's 

 Monograph of Recent Brachiopoda ; Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond., 2nd ser. Zool., vol. iv. 

 pt. iii. p. 236, Oct. 1888. 



4 We are told that the collection when received weighed no less than seven tons ! 



