Castelnau (1843) described and figured a Phacops said to come from Cacapon Springs, West Virginia, which he thought possessed remains of appendages. There is nothing in the description or figures to indicate exactly what was present, but it is very unlikely that any limbs were preserved. The broad thin "appendage" figured may have been a fragment of a thoracic segment. This specimen was evidently described by Castelnau before 1843, as is inferred from a reference in the Neues Jahrbuch, 1843, P. 504, but I have not seen the earlier publication.
Burmeister (1843-1846), in his "Organization of the Trilobites," reviewed in extenso the history of the search for appendages, and concluded that they must have been so soft as to preclude the possibility of their being preserved as fossils. "Their very absence in fossils most distinctly proves their former real structure" (p. 10). In figures 7 and 8 on plate 6 he gave a restoration of the ventral surface of an Asaphus, the first restoration of the ventral anatomy to be attempted. Since he chose modern branchiopods as his model, he did not go so far wrong as he might have done. Still, there is little in the figure that would now be accepted as correct. The following quotation will serve to give the opinion of this zoologist, who from his knowledge of the Crustacea, was the most competent of the men of his time to undertake a restoration of the appendages of the trilobites:
… in giving a certain form to the feet in the restored figure, I have done so rather intending to indicate what they might have resembled, than with any idea of assuming their actual form. I merely assert that these organs were soft, membranous, and fringed, adapted for locomotion in water, placed on the abdominal portion of the body, and extending sidewise beneath the lateral lobes of the rings, as shown in the ideal transverse section. These feet were also indented, and thus divided into several lobes at the open lower side, and each separate lobe was furnished at the margin with small bristles serving as fins. The last and external lobe was probably longer, smaller, and more movable, and reached to the termination of the projecting shell lobe, bearing a bladder-shaped gill on the inner side (1846, p. 45).
McCoy (1846) observed in several trilobites a pair of pores situated in the dorsal furrows near the anterior end of the glabella. He showed that the pits occupy precisely the position of the antennæ of insects and suggested that they indicated the former presence of antennæ in these trilobites (chiefly Anipyx and "Trinucleus"). The evidence from Cryptolithus, set forth on a later page, indicates the correctness of McCoy's view.
Richter (1848, p. 20, pl. 2, fig. 32) described and figured what he took to be a phyllopod-like appendage found in a section through a Phacops. Without the specimen it is impossible to say just what the structure really was. The outline figure is so obviously modeled on an appendage of Apus that one is inclined to think it somewhat diagrammatic. In calling attention to this neglected "find," Clarke (1888, p. 254, fig.) interprets the appendage as similar to the spiral branchiæ of Calymene senaria, and adds that he himself has seen evidence of spiral branchiæ in the American Phacops rana.
Beyrich (1846) described a cast of the intestine of "Trinucleus," and Barrande (1852) further elaborated on this discovery.
Corda (1847) made a number of claims for appendages, but all were shown by Barrande (1852) to be erroneous.
Barrande (1852, 1872) gave a somewhat incomplete summary of the various attempts to describe the appendages of trilobites, concluding that none showed any evidence of other than soft appendages, until Billings' discovery of 1870.
Volborth (1863) described a long chambered tubular organ in Illænus which he believed to represent a cast of the heart of a trilobite, but which has since been likened by writers to the intestinal tract in "Trinucleus."