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 BRACE BRACHIOPODA 177 and Ireland, also visiting the Rhine, Belgium, and Paris. An account of part of this journey was afterward published by his companion, Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, under the title of " Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England." In the following year he visited Hungary, where he was arrested on suspicion of being a secret agent of Kossuth, and tried before a court martial, but, through the efforts of C. J. McCurdy, United States charge d'af- faires at Vienna, was soon released. He after- ward visited Switzerland, England, and Ire- land, giving special attention to schools, pris- ons, and reformatory institutions. Returning to the United States in 1852, he became asso- ciated in the labors of the Rev. Mr. Pease among the most degraded class of the city of New York, and was chiefly instrumental in the formation of the " Children's Aid Society," an association for transferring destitute and va- grant children to homes in the country, and which also to a large extent provides lodgings, instruction, and other aid for poor boys and girls in the city. Of this society he is still (1873) the secretary and principal agent. In 1856 he made a journey in northern Europe, and in 1872 revisited Hungary, where he was received with marked attention. He has pub- lished "Hungary in 1851" (1852); "Home Life in Germany" (1853); "Norse Folk," a description of the religious, social, and politi- cal condition of the people of Sweden and Norway (1857); "Races of the Old World" (1863); "The New West" (1869); "Short Sermons for Newsboys ; " and " The Dangerous Classes of New York" (1872). BRACE, Julia, a blind deaf mute, born at Newington, Conn., in 1806. She lost botli sight and hearing at the age of 4J- years, and soon forgot the few words she had learned to speak. In 1825 she entered the American asylum for the deaf and dumb at Hartford, and remained there about 30 years, when she went to Bloomfield, Conn., where she still resides with a sister (1873). As compared with other blind deaf mutes, she seems possessed of only ordinary abilities. In all that concerns out- ward and material nature she manifests much intelligence. She possesses great tenacity of memory and nice powers of discrimination, being able to distinguish readily articles be- longing to different persons. She keeps her- self apprised of the progress of time, days, weeks, and months, and notes the return of the Sabbath. In her intellectual education she has made little progress ; a few facts have been acquired, but soon forgotten. It is doubtful if she possesses any distinct idea of God, but she seems to have a sense of right and wrong. She has never been guilty of theft, falsehood, or any deliberate wickedness ; and while tena- cious of her own rights, she will not knowing- ly invade those of others. BRACHIOPODA, or Brarhiopods (Gr. ppax'ov, arm, and woif, foot), till within a few years universally regarded as one of the classes of Arms of Brachiopod. mollusca, named by Cuvier from two long, cili- ated arms, which project from the side of the mouth, and with which they create currents that bring them food. By De Blainville and Owen they were called palliobranehiata, from pallium, a mantle, and branehia, gills, the deli- cate mantle covering the body constituting the respiratory apparatus of the animals. They are bivalve, differing from the conchifera in the valves being always unequal : yet they are symmetrical and equal-sided. The valves are dorsal and ventral, instead of right and left, the smaller and lower being generally consid- ered the dorsal valve. By the old naturalists they were commonly called lampades, or "lamp shells," from the resem- blance of their form to that of the antique lamps; the hole for the wick in these being represented in the shell by the curved beak of the ventral valve, through which the organ passes by which the ani- mal attaches itself to any substance. The brachio- poda all belong to salt water. They are found at- tached to corals, to other shells, and to the under sides of shelving rocks. Though a low animal type, no other class exhib- its such a great range in time, geographical dis- tribution, and depth of water ; they are found from the Silurian to the present epoch, from the poles to the tropics, and from near high-water mark to the greatest depths reached by the dredge. Among the earliest forms of animal life were the lingula of the lowest fossiliferous rocks. This genus has continued through all the series of formations, during which multitudes of other forms have been introduced and spread through an immense number of species, which have long since disappeared, leaving no type of their family in existence ; but the ancient genus lingula is still met with in the Pacific and on our Atlantic coast; and the terebratula and diidna, which were intro- duced in periods nearly as re- mote, have representatives liv- ing in many parts of the world. More than 1,000 extinct spe- cies have been described. They constitute a large proportion of the shells found so abun- dantly throughout the New York system, as the spirifer, productus, atrypa, itrophomena, &c. They were most numerous in the Silurian and Devonian epochs, since which they have been declining; there were about 700 in the paleeozoic age, not more than 200 in the cretaceous period, and there are fewer than 100 at the present time, of which the best known genera are lingula, terebratula, discina, rhynconella, and crania, all of which are very old forms. Naturalists have for some Terebratula eep- tentrionalis.