i4r 



any definite conclusion as to which of the two names should be accepted as 

 having priority. 



The first Chinese form recorded was described by Davidson as S/>. dis- 

 junctus Sow. Here Sp. vernciiili and with some doubt Sp. archiaci too of 

 MuRCHisON were regarded as synonymous. Kayser, on the contrary, ac- 

 cepted Murchison's nomenclature for the specimens collected by vonRichtho- 

 FEN in China. In the year I902,Martelli described a lot of specimens collected 

 by some missionaries in the province of Shen-hsi. He also followed Kayser 

 in using Sp. vcrimdli for them ; and beside that species there were five 

 varieties recorded by him, namely, archiaci Murch., sjib-archiaci Martelli,. 

 disjiinctus Sow., lonsdalci Murch. and siibextensus Martelli. Thus Sow- 

 erby's species was considered by Kayser as a variety of Murchison's species ; 

 in other words, the two forms were once more separated from each other,, 

 although not as independent species. 



Very recently another Italian paper appeared which explicated some 

 Devonian Brachiopods and two silurian fossils collected in the Lean- 

 shan mountains in the province of Shen-hsi, likewise by missionaries. 

 .GiusTiNA Pellizzari, who is the writer of the paper, studied the species very 

 much in detail. He distinguished seven varieties in the species which he de- 

 nominated as Spirifcr disjunctiis Sowerby. All the forms illustrated by 

 GossELET were included under this denomination. He not only described 

 these varieties separately, but formulated a key for the determination of the 

 varieties of Shen-hsi. 



The present writer is very much inclined to accept this Italian author's 

 definition and circumscription of the species and its varieties, for several 

 reasons. 



Gos.SELEr's study on the variation of Spirifcr vcrnciiili is certainly a 

 very excellent wprk. He had been able to collect almost every stage of the 

 variations of the species for his undertaking. Especially his definition of the 

 species is a very conclusive one, and deserves the approval it has received 

 from most of the subsequent palaeontologists. The standard by which he 

 classifies the species into subordinate groups is not, however, a very acceptable 

 one, because it is the ratio of the width to the length of the shell. In such 



