THE BRITISH FOSSIL BRACHIOPODA. 339 



Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys says (' British Mollusca,' vol. ii, p. 9) that Terebratulina caput- 

 serpen (is was found by the Rev. M. G. Berkeley, in a living state, attached to a rock at 

 low water, on a part of the Scottish coast where the tide falls only a few feet. The same 

 species is found at variable depths, having been dredged alive from depths varying from 

 3 to upwards of 150 fathoms. 



Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys does not believe that the habitat of any invertebrate animal is 

 affected by bathymetrical conditions, but I cannot imagine that this can in some cases be 

 entirely correct. The late Prof. J. Beete Jukes collected large numbers of Waldheimia 

 flavescens while boating among the reefs ; they were merely washed by the tide, and he 

 gathered them with his hands like limpets on the shore. In 1834 Quoy and Gaimard 

 found the same shell in immense numbers at Port Western, Bass Strait ; they tell us 

 that hundreds were brought up at each haul of the dredge, either grouped among them- 

 selves or attached to other shells. 'Voyage de l'Astrolabe,' 1834, p. 552. 



I have, for many years, devoted considerable attention to the study of Recent and 

 Tertiary Brachiopoda, making a large and instructive collection, because it is more easy 

 to observe variations in age, shape, and character in them than it is always so with the 

 older fossils. It is wonderful, for instance, to observe in a couple of hundred specimens 

 of Waldheimia flavescens the variety in shape that the same form will assume, and which, 

 if fossil, would have tempted the palaeontologist to found out of them half a dozen so- 

 termed species. 



The colours recent species assume are most remarkable and instructive. Some 

 present various shades of white and yellow, livid and horny brown, red and pink, 

 reddish-brown, and different shades of green to brilliant evergreen, blue-green, &c. 

 Similar colours adorned the fossil forms, but in most cases are for ever lost to us. 

 Traces, however, of the original colour, although not vivid, are sometimes seen ; several 

 instances have been noted and illustrated in the pages and plates of this Monograph. 



The study of the recent species is therefore of much importance, and has progressed in a 

 satisfactory manner during the last few years. Much, however, has still to be done in 

 this respect, and the more the sea-bottoms are explored will our knowledge of the subject 

 be increased. Recent species have been classed in about twenty-two genera or sub-genera ; 

 but we are not yet in a position to offer a complete list of the good species, so many 

 doubtful and uncertain ones having been proposed from time to time from the inspection 

 of single specimens, which may be, and are very possibly, varieties of some of the others. 



The largest recent Brachiopod that has come under my notice is a specimen of 

 Waldheimia venosa, Solander, 1 measuring 3 inches 2 lines in length, by 2 inches in 

 breadth and 1 inch 11 lines in depth. It had been obtained alive by Rear- Admiral 

 B. J. Sullivan, in the outer harbour of Fort William, Falkland Islands, in 1843, the 



1 In 1789, in ' A Voyage round the World,' G. Dixon described and figured (Appendix 1, p. 355) a 

 specimen of this remarkable species : — " At Falkland's Islands we met with a curious kind of shell of the 

 Anomia genus of Linnaeus, of which, though the species are numerous in a fossil state in most parts of the 



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