182 MISS A. CRANE ON A BRACHIOPOD L^P^- ^, 



desire, were presented to the nation) were removed to the Geological 

 Department of the Natural History Branch of the British Museum 

 at South Kensington, where lie wished them to be deposited, Mr. 

 Brazier's series was found apart from the recent specimens with the 

 fossil collection. Each species had been placed in a separate box 

 with a number inside, and this number was found to correspond with 

 Mr. Braziers Hst, which Dr. Davidson had copied into his letter- 

 book with his remarks appended. The executor instructed me 

 temporarily to retain the series for examination. 



One very interesting new species of the remarkable genus Atretia 

 was discovered. This Dr. Davidson had named after his friend 

 and correspondent Mr. John Brazier, of Sydney, who has dredged 

 so extensively in Australian waters. The name Atrefia brazieri 

 was attached in Dr. Davidson's handwriting. The specimens 

 are so excellent that there can be no possibility of generic error 

 on my part, and I have therefore thought it my duty to publish 

 a short description of Atretia brazieri, Dav., n. sp. MS., to secure 

 priority for his last species, which should be figured in Part II. of 

 the Davidson Monograph of Recent Brachiopoda which I am now 

 engaged in editing for the Transactions of the Linnean Society. 



Atretia, as its name implies, is an imperforate genus. It may be 

 as well briefly to recapitulate the history of the type species, first 

 published bv Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys under the name Cryptopora gnomon 

 in ' Nature' for Dec. 1869. In the 'Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.' 

 1876, Jeffreys gave the earliest description of the species, substituting 

 the generic name Atretia for Cryptoj)ora ; Dr. Davidson gave the first 

 figures in his Supplement to the " Recent and Tertiary British 

 Brachiopoda" (Pal. Soc. 1874), and again illustrated the species in one 

 of the two plates he contributed to Dr. Jeffreys's paper on " The Mol- 

 lusca (Brachiopoda) of the 'Lightning 'and 'Porcupine" Expeditious," 

 published in the Proc. Zool. Soc, April 1878. Atretia gnomon 

 was dredged off the west coast of Ireland in from 1380-1443 fms. ; 

 during the 'Valorous' expedition, 1100-1750 fms., in Davis Straits. 

 It was found by Dr. Friele (during the Norwegian Arctic expedition) 

 about 30 miles AY. ofTromso, in 650 fms., "on the slope of the 

 banks cold area." It was dredged off Marocco and the Canaries at 

 depths of 50-65 fms., by the ' Talisman ' and French expeditions. In 

 all more than fifty examples of the European representative of this 

 well-marked Rhynchonelloid have been obtained by Jeffreys, Friele, 

 and tiie Marquis de Folin. 



M. Eugeue Deslongchamps, in his ' Etudes Critiques sur des 

 Brachiopodes nouveaux ou peu connus,' p. 242 (Caen, 1884), 

 expresses an opinion that Atretia gnomon, Jeffr., is probably only a 

 very young stage of R. psittacea, Chemn. But the recent discovery 

 by ]\ir. Biazier of eleven good specimens of the genus Atretia in 

 the Southern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of New South Wales, tends 

 to invalidate that assumption, the only BhynchonelltB in the 

 Australian and Novo-Zelandian region being the deeply ribbed 

 or furrowed Rh. nigricans and its varietv', R. pijxidata, Boog- Watson. 

 To these well-characterized forms Atretia brazieri, smooth, flat, 



