112 The American Geologist. February. i903. 
MORSE ON LIVING BR ACHIOPODS.* 
Reviewed by 
Charles Schuchert, Washington. 
This very valuable and splendid work on some recent brach- 
iopods is of so much value to students of fossils of this class 
as to be deemed worthy of lengthy review in this place. I shall 
limit myself at this time to such parts of Prof. Morse's work 
as have direct bearing on fossil forms. The observations re- 
corded by the author were made more than twenty years ago 
and we had to wait this long time for this publication because 
of a minute study of Japanese pottery. In the meantime much 
of the author's work on Lingula and Discinisca was anticipat- 
ed by Joubin and Blochmann. 
Habits. — Paleontologists have long lamented that so little 
has been published on the habits of living brachiopods, and 
Morse remarks that it "is somewhat surprising when one con- 
siders the ease with which abundant material of certain species 
in life may be obtained. Without a study of the living animal, 
it is impossible to realize the activity of the lacunal circulation, 
the extreme mobility of various parts of the organism, the beau- 
tiful colors of the soft parts, and the varied and graceful at- 
titudes of the brachia." (p. 316). 
"Many of these animals may easily be kept alive; indeed, 
with the Ecardine forms [Morse uses this term for the In- 
articulate, and Testicardines for the Articulate divisions] the 
vitality manifested by them is almost beyond belief. I brought 
home in mid-summer, from North Carolina, a distance of 
nearly seven hundred miles, living ispecimens of Glottidia pyi'a- 
niidata. These were kept in a small food bowl. They were 
afterwards carried to Eastport, Maine, and then to Troy, New 
York, yet none of them died until late in the fall, six months 
after. I also brought back from Japan a number of speci- 
mens of a small species of Lingula and not one of these died 
until late in the year. Joubin says 'the Crania remained ex- 
posed, upon my table, to the sun, cold, heat, without being in- 
jured. Numerous algae had invaded my basins. I had left 
* Observations on Living Brachiopoda. Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., V, 
July. 1902; pp. 313-386, plates 39-61. By Edward S. Morse. 
