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Show 1868.] DR. J. S. BOWERBANK ON SPONGES. 129 has never been out of my possession. We may naturally ask what confidence can we place in the system of an author who is so systematically incorrect ? In this style Dr. Gray has described sixty-five sponges in m y possession which he has never seen ; and of these sixty-five, fifty are the types of a portion of his new genera. The consequences of this mode of proceeding are that he has fallen into some mcst extraordinary errors. I will not weary my readers by specifying and criticising all the author's efforts of this description; the first one in his list, extracted from the ' Monograph of British Sponges,' will suffice for the purpose. Page 533.-"3. Mgogropila. Sponge massive or coating, rugose. Oscules large, dispersed. Skin spiculose. Skeleton reticulated; fibres formed of bungled spicules. Spicules of four kinds: - I. Fusiform, needle-like, or subclavate. 2. contorted and reversed, bihamate. 3. Inequianchorate, bidentate. 4. Fusiform, tricurvate." If this generic character be compared with the specific character of Desmacidon eegagropila, Mon. Brit. Sponges, vol. ii. p. 352, it will be at once seen to be almost verbatim the same, with the exception of a new generic character of the author's own invention, that of " bungled spicules," the meaning of which I must leave to the reader's own imagination. There is also an alteration in the name of the author's new genus, which is printed Mgo-gropila in place of Mgagropila, the original specific name of Dr. Johnston, sufficiently applicable to the species, but not so as a generic name. Similar distortions of established generic and specific names occur in several other instances. Thus, in page 507 of his paper, for Farrea orca, we should read F. occa; pages 503 and 515, for Ophistospongia read Ophlitaspongia ; page 545, 20. Vibulinus, for var. damicenus read damicornis ; page 534, Iophon, for bipolicated read bipocillated ; page 527, 2. Polymastia read Polymastia ; page 527, 1. Pencillaria, S. pencillus should be S. penicillus ; page 542, 7. for Eciomemia read Ecionemia ; page 532, synopsis of sections of Family II., bi- or tripolicated should be bipocillated; there is no such form as tripocillated. Other errors of the same description occur dispersed through the work ; but these will serve to display the loose and careless style in which the author has treated his subject. But these are not the most extraordinary efforts of the author; for in one case he has not only made two new genera and two new species out of one species, but out of one individual of that species, and without having seen the sponge or even the slip of glass containing the spicula from which he derives his two new genera. He bases his new genus Dymnus, page 539. no. 27, on the figures of spicula represented in m y work on British Sponges, vol. i. pl. 5. figs. 115-117, and his genus Damo, page 539 no. 28, on the spicula represented by figures 118-120 in the same plate, not being aware that both forms are contained in the same slide of sponge-spicula, which was prepared from a small fragment of a sponge from PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1868, No. IX. |