HISTORY OF RESEARCH. iii 



dare not decide precisely to what they belong until I have received more and 

 better specimens." 



These observations of von Broniell are mentioned l)y Wahlenl)erg' and later 

 writers, who are of the opinion that the rock referred to w\as a shale containing- 

 Graptolites. Wahlenberg remarks that " when the shale is of a bluish or bluish- 

 grey colour, the pictures of Gra/ptoliilms appear black, and at the same time their 

 outlines so blend among themselves that their full figures appear only linear, and 

 these Bromell took for leaves of grasses." 



jj-35 The great systematist, Linnceus, was the second to notice 



Lhuueus, and describe examples of Graptolites ; and we owe to him 



' Svstema Naturae,' tlie title GrajjtoUthus, which was subsequently adopted as the 



'^*^'^- ^- name of the genus that eventually became accepted as the 



type of the entire group. In the first edition of his ' Systema Naturee,' section 



" Regnum lapideum," Classis III, Fossilia, he defines his third order as follows : — 



" Graptolithus, picture resembling a fossil." It w^ould appear, therefore, from 



this description, and from the list of the specimens which he refers to as 



belonging to this order, that the title Graptolithus was originally proposed by 



Linnffius for those well-known markings — dendritic incrustations and the like — 



which frequently occur in rocks and which simulate fossils, but which had, even 



previous to his time, been generally acknowledged not to be fossils in the true 



sense of the word. Indeed, in the tAvelfth edition of his ' Systema Naturj-e,' 



published in 17G7, he asserts definitely, "A Fossil, properly speaking, is not a 



Graptolite." 



Between the appearance of the first and twelfth editions 

 /"* of his ' Systema Naturge,' Linnasus published, however, his 



,„io ,' -d' . ' Skilnska Resa ' ('Travels in Scania'). In that work he 



' Skanska Kesa. ^ _ ^ 



figured and described certain markings on a slab which are 

 undoubtedly true fossils, and clearly belong to the group of organic remains 

 now known as Graptolites. His description is as follows : — " Fossil or Graptolite, 



of a strange kind, which, in the grey rock with black characters, 



reseml)les a line imprinted with markings like those on the edge of a coin, and often 

 passes into a narrower spiral end." 



According to Tullberg (oj). cit. supra), the slab bearing these fossils was 

 obtained from a gravel hill, named Bybjer, near Herrestad. At this locality 

 Tullberg asserts that no Graptolite shales exist in situ, but that loose blocks occur 

 in the mass of gravel. 



The exact specific identity of the fossils thus referred to by Linnseus in his 

 ' Skanska Resa ' became a matter of considerable controversy among palaeontolo- 

 gists on both sides of the Atlantic a century later, but the consensus of opinion at 

 the present day is in favour of the view that the fragments figured by him are 

 true organic remains, and represent two distinct Graptolite species; one being the 



