Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/238

196 Trilobites and Bracliiopoda have been added to the list through the indefatigable exertions of Prof. Linnarsson, Mr Hicks, and others. The Bracliiopoda, along with the groups mentioned by Barrande, are in all probability the earliest representatives of life at present known ; for Mr Hicks has obtained undoubted examples of Lingula or Lingidella (L. primceva) from the very base of the whole Cambrian series of St David s in Wales. It is impossible for the present to offer more than an approximate com parison, based on numbers, of the genera and species that have existed during the various geological more or less extended periods ; and many years will have to pass away before some master mind will be able to grapple with the accumulated observations of a century or more, and reduce the number of genera and species within reasonable limits, from which something like reliable data may be formed. Lyell has stated that nothing is more remarkable in the Silurian strata generally of all countries than the preponder ance of the Brachiopoda over other forms of Mollusca. Their proportional numbers can by no means be explained by supposing them to have inhabited seas of great depth, for the contrast between the Palaeozoic and the pre sent state of things has not been essentially altered by the late discoveries made in our deep-sea dredgings. We find the living Brachiopoda so rare as to form about one forty-fourth of the whole bivalve fauna, whereas in the Lower Silurian rocks, and where the Brachiopoda reach their maximum, they are represented by more than twice as many species as the Lamellibranchiate bivalves. There may indeed be said to be a continuous decrease of the pro portional number of this lower tribe of Mollusca as we proceed from the older to the newer rocks. Owing to the great number of synonyms it would not be possible at present to offer even an approximate statement with reference to the number of known species. Bigsby states that some 1754 species of Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous species of Brachiopoda have been found iu America ; 1905 in Europe. It is probable that as many as between four or five thousand species of Brachiopoda have been described, and it is noteworthy that the species, so immensely abundant during the Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous periods, became much less numerous during the Permian and Triassic, while they again became abundant, although comparatively reduced in number, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. In the Tertiaries they had materially decreased in number, and they are represented at the present time by about 100 species. It has also been clearly ascertained that a certain number of genera and species passed from one system or formation into the one that followed it. Thus, approxi mately, it may be said that nine genera appeared for the first time in the Cambrian system, fifty-two in the Silurian, i twenty-one in the Devonian, seven in the Carboniferous, two in the Permian, three in the Triassic, eleven in the Jurassic, five in the Cretaceous, three in the Tertiary, and nine in the recent periods. But what wonderful changes have been operating during the incalculable number of ages in which the creation and extinction of a large number of genera and thousands of species have taken place, some few only of the primordial or first created genera, such as Lingula, Discina, and Crania, having fought their way and struggled for existence through the entire sequence of geological time. Many were destined to comparatively ephemeral duration, while others had a greater or lesser pro longation of existence. The importance of the study of the Brachiopoda must be obvious to all. They are, as already stated, among the first well-known indications of life in this world, and they have continued to be very extensively represented up to the present time. They are also very characteristic fossils by which rocks at great distances, whether in New Zealand or Spitsbergen, in the Himalayas or the Ancles, can be identified, without its being even necessary for the Palaeontologist to visit the district whence the fossils are derived ; they are, as Mantell would have termed them, sure medals of creation, the date of their appearance firmly stamped upon them, and their distinctive characters so legibly impressed as to defy misinterpretation.  

 BRACHYLOGUS, a title applied, for the first time in the middle of the IGth century, to a work which contains a systematic exposition of the Roman law, and which some writers have assigned to the reign of the Emperor Justinian, and others have treated as an apocryphal work of the 1 6th j century. The earliest extant edition of this work was published at Lyons in 1549, under the title of Corpus Legumper modern Institutionum ; and the title Brachylogus totius Julis Civilis appears for the first time in an edition published at Lyons in 1553. The origin of the work may be referred with great probability to the 12th century. There is internal evidence that it was composed subse quently to the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, as it contains a Lombard law of that king s, which forbids the testimony of a clerk to be received against a layman. On the other hand its style and reasoning is far superior to that of the law writers of the 10th and llth centuries; whilst the cir cumstance that the method of its author has not been in the slightest degree influenced by the school of the Gloss-writers (Glossatores) leads fairly to the conclusion that he wrote before that school became dominant at Bologna. Savigny, who has traced the history of the Brachylogus with great care, is disposed to think that it is the work of Irnerius himself. Its value is chiefly histori cal, as it furnishes evidence that a knowledge of Justinian s legislation was always maintained in Northern Italy. The author of the work has adopted the Institutes of Justinian as the basis of it, and draws largely on the Digest, the Code, and the Novells ; whilst certain passages, evidently taken from the Sentential Iteceptce of Julius Paulus, imply that the author was also acquainted with the Visigothic code of Roman law compiled by order of Alaric II. An edition by Professor Bocking was published at Berlin in 1829, under the title of Corpus Legum sive Brachylogus Juris Civilis.  BRACTON,, a learned ecclesiastic, who was chief justiciary in the reign of Henry III. He is supposed to have been born at Bretton-Clovelly in Devonshire. He studied at Oxford, where he took the degree of doctor of laws, and is believed to have delivered lectures in that university. He was appointed a justice itinerant for the counties of Nottingham and Derby in 1245, and his name appears as a justiciary or judge of the Aula Regis on the Fine Rolls in 1249 and in each of the next seventeen years, written indifferently Bratton and Bretton, which circumstance has led Selden and others to attribute to him the authorship of the earliest treatise on the law of England in the French tongue, known as Bretone or Bretoun. In 1254 the king assigned to him by letters patent, in which he was designated &quot;dilectus clericus noster,&quot; the use of a house in London belonging to William late earl of Derby during the minority of the heir, and in 1263 he was collated to the archdeaconry of Barnstaple. This office, however, he resigned in the following year; and in 1265 he was appointed chief justiciary, and held that office until the end of 1267, when all notice of him ceases. He wrote 