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Show 1868.] DR. J. S. BOWERBANK ON SPONGES. 133 That MM. Quoy and Gaimard did not correctly comprehend the nature and structure of their species, A. speciosum, is no reason why the name they assigned to it should be put on one side, and that of Euplectella, founded on error by Professor Owen, substituted for it. Or if this want of knowledge of a type specimen be sufficient to abrogate the author's title, then Dr. Gray's genus Aphrocallistes, described in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1§58, p. 114, as a calcareous sponge, when in reality it is a siliceo-fibrous one, must fall by the same law. If M . de Blainville has chosen his specimen to illustrate the genus Alcyoncellum injudiciously in his ' Manuel d'Actinologie,' that is no reason for abrogating the name originally assigned to their genus by M M . Quoy and Gaimard in their previously published work descriptive of the zoology of the voyage of the Astrolabe ; and there can be no mistake as to which specimen is really the type of the genus, as they have figured it in the atlas to that work, plate 26, Zoophytes, fig. 3. Dr. Gray's second subclass, Porifera calcarea, is treated in the same unscrupulous manner, the only species left to represent Grantia being G. ciliata. Grantia ensata is turned into Ute ensata ; Grantia compressa into Artynes compressa. Leucosolenia, Leuconia, and Lucogypsia fare better, as they escape alteration. If the course of proceeding adopted by Dr. Gray in the construction of his proposed new arrangement of the sponges is to be considered legitimate, if it be tolerated that any naturalist shall get sight surreptitiously of the specimens belonging to another, and then describe, name, and publish them, as in the case of his genus Astrostoma, page 514, unknown to the owner, and without permission so to use them, if it be considered right that from the figure of a single spiculum of a sponge, published in illustration of organic structural peculiarities by one author, any one has a right to name generically and specifically the specimen whence it is derived and without having ever seen it, and thus to forestall, haphazard, the manuscript descriptions of the owner of the specimens, nothing for the future will be easier than to establish new genera and construct new systems of arrangement; but then the question will naturally arise, of what use are such systems to practical naturalists ? This question Dr. Gray himself answers in page 495 of his paper, in treating of Nardo's ' Spongiariorum Classificatio,' where he observes, " Almost all the species mentioned as belonging to the genera are new and not described in this paper; so that it is impossible to determine what they are except for such persons as have specimens named by the author." This observation of Dr. Gray respecting Nardo's species is perfectly correct; but the Doctor does not seem to be aware that it applies quite as justly to the genera and species which he has named in his own paper, without having seen the sponges whence his names are derived. I will not comment especially on the author's choice of generic names, as he has bespoken our indulgence on that subject at page 500 ; but they strongly remind m e of an oral tradition among the old officers of the natural-history department of the British Museum, that in bygone days one of the principals of |