BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 53 



bionomy of the eurypterids, and to note also the change from an 

 unquestioning assumption that the habitat was marine, to doubt and 

 finally to opposition to the old idea. 



Mitchell considered the form which he found in Westmoreland, 

 New York, to be the impression of a catfish and so placed it under the 

 genus Silurus, noting that the nearest living relative was the elec- 

 trical silure of the Nile (180). He had no idea of the great age of 

 the fossil, but supposed it to have been the remains of a fish which 

 had lived in the Mohawk which was then generally believed to have 

 been dammed so that the river waters and their fauna spread over a 

 wide area. It is curious to see that the first man to find a eurypterid 

 should, without any clear idea of its age or its true nature, have sup- 

 posed that it lived in a river. This was mere speculation on his part 

 and of no real significance. In 1825, however, Dekay, recognizing 

 its true relation to the arthropods, established a new genus, Euryp- 

 terus, for it. He considered it most nearly related to the genera 

 Apus, Binoculus and Lepidurus among modern forms, and placed it 

 with the crustaceans of the order Branchiopoda. He mentions no 

 other fossil associates, nor does he make any statement concerning the 

 habitat, but he evidently considered it marine, for had he not, it is 

 only natural to suppose that he would have made some statement 

 to that effect, since it would have been a new and, indeed, a startling 

 idea to advance. In 1841 Conrad, writing of the Eurypterus from 

 the Bertie says (44, 38): "It has been suggested that this genus was 

 of fresh water origin, but the presence of fucoids in the same stratum 

 where the Eurypterus occurs, and the absence of the slightest evi- 

 dence of a fresh water deposit in any part of the Silurian system, leave 

 no room to doubt that this singular crustacean inhabited the sea." 

 Conrad did not state who the bold spirit was that made such an 

 original suggestion and his reasons for rejecting this explanation 

 are unconvincing, because so-called fucoids are not necessarily marine, 

 and non-marine deposits are now extensively known from the Siluric. 

 Furthermore, even if the "fucoids" prove to be graptolites, as now 

 claimed by Ruedemann, a non-marine habitat for the Eurypterus is 

 not precluded. All the early writers seem to have agreed to consign 

 the eurypterids to the class of the Crustacea, and to maintain for them 

 a marine habitat. It has taken many years of patient labor for the 

 students of the anatomy of these organisms and of the taxonomic 

 relations of the Eurypterida to the Crustacea, to Limulus and to the 

 scorpions, to convince the geological world that the Eurypterida are 



