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Show 128 DR. J. S. BOWERBANK ON SPONGES. [Feb. 13, the slightest notice of his intended appropriation of it. Numerous cases of this description occur in his " Notes on the Arrangement of Sponges ;" and I cannot give a better instance of it than that of his genus Astrostoma, p. 514. As an example of the facility and inaccuracy with which Dr. Gray propounds a new genus, in part 1 of the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1867, in his paper on Zoanthince, in treating ofPalythoa, p. 238, he writes thus:-"Mr. Bowerbank, in his 'British Sponges' (t. 20. fig. 307), figures a very similar body, which he describes as a portion of the dermal surface of an undescribed sponge from the East Indies, having numerous depressed pores, furnished with stomata, like protective organs. Mr. Tyler, F.L.S., has kindly shown me some specimens of the sponge mounted as a transparent and an opake object ; and they are very like a parasitic actinoid polype; but the rays are strengthened with spicules on the surface, and on the tips with some prominent ones (which form a pencil), unlike any Actinia I have seen, and so they are perhaps sponges. If so, they ought to form a genus, which may be called Astrostoma." Such a mention of a microscopic fragment would certainly never be considered a fit characterization of a new genus; and yet, in his paper on Sponges, part 2 of the Proceedings of the Zool. Soc. for 1867, p. 514, it is quoted thus:-"Astrostoma, Gray, P. Z. S. 1867, p. 239." He now proceeds to characterize his new genus as follows : - " 9. Astrostoma. Sponge solitary, branched ; fibres horny, flexible. Oscules ? circular, scattered and concave, sunk in the surface, with eight or ten rays, which are covered with spicules. Spicules small, subulate, in corneous fibre." H e subsequently writes, " I have been enabled, through Mr. Tyler, to examine the original specimens from which Dr. Bowerbank described this species, which is probably a parasite like the genus Bergia of Michelotti." In every one of these details he is completely wrong. In the first place, what he means by " solitary," as a generic character, I really cannot comprehend; secondly, it is not branched. It is a simple unbranched cylinder, nine inches in length, and three-fourths of an inch in diameter for a considerable portion of its length. Thirdly, it has not a particle of keratose fibre in its structure, being purely spiculo-reticulate ; audit is quite inflexible. The author then describes the inhalant areas as oscules, and does not mention the true oscula, although two out of twenty-one of them are figured in a portion of this sponge (Mon. Brit. Sponges, vol. i. plate 20. fig. 308), and are described, along with the inhalant areas, in page 278 of the same work ; and lastly, the spicula are not subulate, nor are they " in corneous fibre." Thus there is not a single point in the descriptive character of the author's genus Astrostoma that is correct. Nor is Dr. Gray correct in stating that he has " been enabled, through Mr. Tyler, to examine the original specimens from which Dr. Bowerbank described the species," as the original specimen has never been out of m y hands, Mr. Tyler having only received from me a small piece from which to mount microscopical specimens. The specimen figured in vol. i. Mon. Brit. Sponges, plate 20. fig. 307, |