SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 
OB' 
THE SECOND YARKAND MISSION. 
KAEAKOEAM STONES, 
OR 
SYRINGOSPH^RID^. 
By P. martin DUNCAN, M.B. Bond., F.E.S. 
I.-—The history of the discovery of the Sybingosph^ridje and the literature of the 
SUBJECT. 
A number of spheroidal and of spherical stones, ornamented naturally on the surface, 
and which give no indications of ever having been attached to other bodies, could not but 
attract the attention of those geologists who years since travelled in Kashmir. Measuring 
in some instances two or three inches in diameter and in others not half an inch, and resem¬ 
bling stone balls in shape, these fossils, from the Karakoram range, became known to the 
curious as “ Karakoram stones.” But that they were not simple mineral productions was 
evident from the first to the educated collector; nevertheless, the nature of their external 
anatomy was singularly mistaken by those palaeontologists into whose hands they first came. 
Dr. Yerchere, when writing on the geology of Kashmir in the Journal of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal in 1867, had the benefit of the palaeontological skill of M. de Yerneuil, and two 
plates of figures accompanied the descriptions of these remarkable forms.^ 
The description given of one species was that the bodies are “perfectly globular, covered 
with small rounded warts, sharply defined. The whole shell, between the warts, is pierced 
with minute pores. No traces of plates; no mouth nor stalk scar idsible.” The locality 
whence the specimens were derived was the rocky plains at the foot of the Masha Brum, 
Karakoram chain. The generic position was stated to be that of Sphceronites. 
Another species had the name Sp1i(Bronites ryallii,YeYQ\\.^ given to it; and the diag¬ 
nosis is as follows:—“ Globular, large warts well set apart and not very sharply defined. 
The whole shell is covered with pores. No mouth. A stalk stem very conspicuous.” A third 
specimen, also classed as a Sphmronites, is thus noticed :—“Depressed, no warts or spines : no 
plates or traces of plates, no stalk scar. The whole surface pierced by minute pores.” These 
two specimens were derived from the same locality as the first. 
^ Joumalj Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1867, Pt. 2, No. 3, Appendix p. 208, Plate VIII, Figs. 5 and 6, and Plate IS, Fig. 1. 
