286 APPENDIX TO THE SUPPLEMENTS TO 



GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 1 



Before closing this Monograph it has been considered desirable to recapitulate some of 

 the principal results brought to light with respect to the Brachiopoda since 1006. 



Thirty years have elapsed since the publication of the General Introduction to the 

 first volume of this Monograph, and during that lapse of years a wonderful amount of 

 precise knowledge has been acquired in all that relates to the history and characters of 

 the class. 



The vast importance attached to the study of these low Invertebrates has been 

 fully recognised, and the investigation has become very popular among anatomists, 

 zoologists, palaeontologists, geologists, and collectors of fossils. The sea-bottom has 

 been carefully explored in many latitudes, and the fossiliferous rocks have been more or 

 less searched for their fossil representatives. Large and valuable collections of recent 

 and fossil forms have been accumulated and carefully studied, and especially so during 

 the last half century, so that the material and observations in our possession are now very 

 considerable. 



Although I have devoted much time to the study of the literature of the subject, 1 

 have failed to discover any work in which a Brachiopod had been noticed prior to 1606, 

 when Prince Fabio Colonna quaintly described and figured his Concha diphya and two 

 or three more species. 2 



In his important work ' Uber Terebrateln," published in 1834, Baron von Buch 



1 In 1847 I briefly alluded to this subject in a paper "What is a Brachiopod?" published in vol. iv of 

 the ' Geological Magazine,' and from which I now reproduce many details. I have also in this Summary, 

 when possible, given the author's own words in connection with some of the points referred to. 



2 In 1847, while making researches in the library of the British Museum for early works treating of 

 the Brachiopoda, I found one by Piince Fabio Colonna, entitled ' Aquatilium et terrestrium aliquot 

 animalium," published at Rome in 160G. In 1G16, the author issued a kind of second edition of his 

 160G publication, but somehow or other all those writers who have alluded to Colonna's works seem not 

 to have been acquainted with the 160G or first edition, wherein the Concha diphya is for the first time 

 described and figured. At my request Dr. C. F. Parona kindly searched for the first edition in different 

 Italian public libraries; and in the Victor-Emanuel Library at Rome he found a copy of the 1606 book. 

 The 1606 and 1616 books are identical, except that in the first edition, published in 1606, the author does 

 not give his treatise ' De Purpura,' and does not reproduce in the 1616 edition the preface given in 1606. 

 In 1616 F. Colonna published in his ' De Purpura' three more species of Brachiopoda. In 16/5 

 Jobann-Daniel Major issued at Rome (and at Kiel) another edition of the ' Opusculum de Purpura,' in 

 small quarto. 



