426 Reviews — The Attachment of Brachiopods. 



a re-examination of the fossils in the light of our knowledge of the 

 living forms could hardly fail to yield results of much interest. As it 

 is, the only fossil yet examined in this light is Pr<zanaspides^ recently 

 descrihed in the pages of this Magazine by Dr. Henry Woodward.' 

 For the others Mr, Smith reproduces, in diagrammatic fashion, the 

 restorations given by the older writers, and attempts to extract from 

 these restorations material for a more detailed comparison with the 

 living forms than has hitherto been given. The results of this 

 comparison are expressed in a new classification of the group, in which 

 Prceanaspides is included in the Anaspididae and the other fossil 

 genera (except Acanthotelson) in a distinct family, Gampsonychidae. 

 The reasons for taking this step are not apparent from the definitions 

 which Mr. Smith gives for these families ; and, in any case, it is 

 decidedly premature in view of the manifest imperfections in our 

 knov^^ledge of the fossils. The suggestion that Aca7ithotelson may be 

 a primitive Amphipod seems singularly inappropriate. 



In discussing the relationships of the Syncarida to the other 

 Malacostraca, Mr. Smith emphasizes, with justice, the many primitive 

 characters of this ancient group : but the place which he assigns to 

 them in the phylogeny of the Malacostraca leads to some strange 

 conclusions. For example, the carapace, which is well developed 

 in the Phyllocarida, the most primitive of the Malacostraca, is supposed 

 to have been lost in some Syncarid-like ancestor of the Peracarida 

 and Eucarida, and to have been re-developed independently in each 

 of these groups. Only the strongest evidence would justify the 

 assumption of so remarkable a course of evolution, but, as a matter 

 of fact, there is no evidence at all. We know from the researches 

 of Peach (recently reviewed in these pages) and others that coeval 

 with the fossil Syncarida were a variety of Crustacea presenting 

 the ' caridoid facies '. These Crustacea possessed a well-developed 

 carapace, and may, for all we know, have presented all the characters 

 which we regard as primitive in the recent Syncarida. Some of them 

 had already developed, as Dr. Henrj^ Woodward has shown in Pygo- 

 cephalus, the brood-pouch of the Peracarida, which Mr. Smith derives 

 from an entirely mythical brood-pouch of the Phyllocarida. It is 

 quite possible that among these caridoid Carboniferous forms may have 

 been the common ancestor of the Eucarida and Peracarida, if that 

 ancestor is not to be sought for in a yet earlier period, as is suggested 

 by the Devonian ' Isopod ' Oxyuropoda ; and it is a reasonable 

 assumption that the Carboniferous Syncarida also arose from one of 

 these caridoid forms \>j suppression of the carapace while retaining 

 other primitive and generalized characters. W. T. Calman. 



V. — Die Anheftung dee Brachiopoden als Getjndlage der Gat- 



TUNGEN TND ArTEN. [ThE ATTACHMENT OF BrACHIOPODS AS BaSIS OF 



Genera and Species.] By N. Yakowlew. Mem. du Com. geol. 

 St. Petersbourg, nouv. ser., 1908, livr. xlviii, pp. 1-32. 



IN this contribution the author demonstrates that the views expressed 

 by him in a previous article entitled " Sur la fixation des 



1 Geol. Mag., 1908, Dec. V, Vol. V, pp. 385-96. 



