164 
The American Geologist . 
March, 1896 
preserved transverse undulating cross ribs which are very sim¬ 
ilar to those of C. gracilis. 
Another objection, which naturally arises in studying these 
forms, is, supposing that other Conularice were sessile also, 
why have not any such bases been found among the thousands 
of specimens of the species already described? Barrande f. had 
more than a thousand specimens of certain species without no¬ 
ticing such basal cups in the young, which are generally 
stouter and better preserved than any other part of the fossil. 
In almost all described shells of Conularia the apex is broken 
off, either irregularly or along a septum. The irregularly bro¬ 
ken shells, which compose b}- far the great majority, have un¬ 
doubtedly lost their proximal parts and are therefore not com¬ 
plete and may be considered out of the discussion. Those closed 
by a septum are most probably not complete either, for as Dr. 
A. Ulrich* has pointed out, the empty chamber between the 
imperforate septa must have been more liable to destruction 
than the other sediment-tilled part. It may, therefore, have 
been lost in most cases, and only that part of the shell begin¬ 
ning at the youngest septum may have been left to us. It re¬ 
mains in the extremely small number of fully preserved shells. 
Wiman,j on the basis of Holm's paper, estimates their num¬ 
ber at less than 5.55 per cent, of all known Conularia\ These 
few forms again, although tapering down to a very small di¬ 
ameter (the writer does not know of a real “point” having 
been observed), do not exclude the possibility of having been 
expanded again into a base. It is true that it does not seem 
very natural to have a large pyramid supported by such a thin 
stem, but this was in fact the case with rather large shells of 
C. gracilis (pi. IX, figs. 1, 7). Suppose all Conularice were 
attached thus, then it would have been just as strange if the 
pyramids, in becoming covered, had not been broken right 
over the bases, as it is that not more of the shells, if they were 
free, should have preserved the apex. It also bears on this 
question that several cups, among them one with a diameter 
of 5 mm., have been found which bear only a very small frag 
ment of the pyramid (several of these will be figured in the 
*Palseozoische Versteinerungen aus Bolivien, p. 35, 1892. 
fPalEeontologische Notizen 1 und 2, Bull. Geol. Inst. Univ. Upsala, 
vol. ii, no. 3, p. 7, 1894. 
