1873.] Sunt [Morse. 
Says Mr. G. B. Sowerby, the great English conchologist, after 
Thompson had so clearly shown that the Cirripedia were crustaceans 
and not molluscans; ‘‘ Without describing the facts, or entering upon 
the arguments, with which he (Thompson) supports this opinion, we 
must be permitted to say that we do not think he has fully demon- 
strated it ; at the same time, considering that, as far as we hitherto 
knew, the Cirripeds were all attached, the circumstance of their being 
free when very young accounts well to our mind for the fact of 
each species being found attached to peculiar situations, which 
would only be compatible with the notion of their being at one time 
free agents, and possessed of an intuitive volition, determining their 
choice of situation.” | 4 
Every worker knows how blindly one will work, when his mind 
is imbued with the accepted views of the subject, when he does not 
dream of questioning what he has always been taught to believe, 
particularly when those teachings come from the highest authorities. 
Even so distinguished a naturalist as Prof. Huxley, after he had re- 
repeatedly observed the external openings of the oviducts in 
Rhynchonella, confesses that ‘‘pre-occupied with the received views 
on the subject (namely, that oviducts were hearts), I at once inter- 
preted them as artificial.”? In the same way Prof. Owen thought he 
saw a minute perforation at the extremity of the intestine of Tere- 
bratula, where no such opening exists. As Lingula, and Discina had 
an anal opening, it was quite natural to believe that the other 
Brachiopoda formed no exception to the rule. 
Many elaborate investigations of the Brachiopoda had been made 
by such eminent naturalists as Cuvier, Vogt, Owen, Hancock, Hux- 
ley, Davidson, Lacaze-Duthiers, Gratiolet and Carpenter, and in all 
their memoirs no doubts had been expressed as to their molluscan 
nature; therefore, on commencing the study of the Brachiopoda, thir- 
teen years ago, I had no more doubt of their molluscan character, 
than of the vertebrate character of birds, and attempted only 
to show more closely the homologies which I believed existed between 
the Brachiopoda and Mollusca. When at last they had been forced 
into the place where I believed they rightly belonged, the result of 
that work was published in the Proceedings of the Essex Institute,3 
1 Sowerby, Genera of Shells. 
2 Huxley, Proc. Royal Soc., London, Vol. vit., p. 118. 
8 Classification of the Mollusca based upon the Principle of Cephalization. 
Vroc. Essex Inst. Wol. 1v. 1865. And Silliman’s Journal, Vol. xu, July, 1866. 
