BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 1 95 



never the case with other groups of marine organisms and it is not 

 logical to suppose that the eurypterids should in so many instances 

 have suffered complete annihilation, leaving only one fragment behind 

 to show that they had lived in the sea of that period. It has been 

 suggested that the eurypterids, like modern crabs and horseshoe 

 crabs, were cannibalistic, not only devouring living members of their 

 own family, but also the molted exoskeletons, in this way destroying 

 most of the hard parts which might otherwise have been preserved. 

 This is an ingenious explanation to account for the fragmentary con- 

 dition of the eurypterids so frequently observed, but when we attempt 

 to explain similarly the appearance in the rocks at a given horizon, of 

 only one fragment, the result is a reductio ad absurdum. For unless 

 we are to believe in a miraculous mutual devouring, such as that 

 which took place between the "Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" 

 as so vividly described by Eugene Field, we' would still expect sur- 

 vivors from the feast. Are we to let imagination run wild and to 

 picture to ourselves a fierce struggle in those ancient seas between the 

 members of the eurypterid family, a struggle which caused the destruc- 

 tion of young and old alike, friends, neighbors, and relatives, until a 

 single maimed, but victorious individual remained? But, if we go 

 so far, w r e must look at the last scene, must gaze upon the painful 

 sight of that last survivor, demented by his orgies, tearing his own 

 limbs apart and devouring them until — well, we would expect that 

 his jaws and ectognaths would have been the final things to remain, 

 but strangely in the Utica sea it was a claw which remained. It is 

 painful to think of the destruction of the young merostomes in these 

 periodic holocausts, that whole faunas should have perished leaving 

 no descendants, and of the infinite labor Nature must have had to 

 create anew genera and species for succeeding seas! Yet, when the 

 early Palaeozoic periods were past these frightful scenes of wholesale 

 destructon gave way to gentler, more pacific modes of life, so that 

 in the Upper Siluric in central and western New York and on the 

 Island of Oesel we find indications from the fossils that the euryp- 

 terids lived amicably to a ripe old age, dying a natural and peaceful 

 death and enjoying a decent and fitting burial in the fine muds of 

 those times. Thus we see again the steady progress in evolution from 

 the early days of barbarism to the later ones of communal altruism, 

 (b) It is impossible to explain the occurrence of one well preserved 

 eurypterid with no other associates, such for instance as E. prominens; 

 for, if the conditions for perfect preservation obtained, then the 



