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PREFACE 



The completion of the present volume is a partial fulfillment of a promise 

 made at the close of Volume IV of the Palasontology of New York, in 1867. The 

 work is presented to the student with a hope that it may prove a useful con- 

 tribution to science and a helpful guide in the study of that most abundant and 

 most important class of Palagozoic fossils, the Brachiopoda. Originally intended 

 to form a supplementary part of Volume IV, the subject has expanded to such 

 an extent that two volumes will be required to present the results with a 

 reasonable degree of completeness ; and even with this addition some very 

 important matter, as the microscopic shell structure, originally intended for 

 the work, will have to be omitted from these volumes. 



The study of the Brachiopoda made necessary in the preparation of Volumes 

 III and IV, and more especially in the latter, had shown the necessity of sub- 

 dividing many of the older recognized genera, which had become the receptacle 

 for forms having external similarity to the typical members of the several groups, 

 but possessing quite dissimilar internal features. The natural disinclination to 

 propose new generic terms for members of a class of fossils which had been so 

 widely and thoroughly studied in Europe, operated as a restriction in the 

 erection of new names. However it became necessary to describe in those 

 volumes and in cotemporary papers some thirty-one new generic forms and 

 to suggest the necessity for farther separation among other heterogeneous 

 assemblages. These studies, made with fairly good collections, and ranging 

 through the Silurian and Devonian faunas, could not fail to attract 

 attention to the different external aspects and interior characters of 

 forms known under the same generic terms, and considered as distri- 

 buted through all the Palaeozoic formations. Although the genera thus 

 far proposed had not been based upon a recognition of their appearance and 

 duration in geological time, yet the student could not fail to discover evidences 



