Vol. XL. March, 1921. No. 



BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 



DIFFERENCES IN VIABILITY IN DIFFERENT TYPES 



OF REGENERATES FROM DISSOCIATED 



SPONGES, WITH A NOTE ON THE 



ENTRY OF SOMATIC CELLS 



BY SPERMATOZOA. 



JULIAN S. HUXLEY, 

 XEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



Having occasion recently to go over the notes on which a pre- 

 vious paper of mine 1 was based, I came across one result which, 

 although not published at the time, now seems worthy of record. 



In the paper referred to, it was shown that by filtering chopped 

 Sycons through coarse instead of fine gauze, and pipetting off 

 the first-deposited portion of the cell-sediment, masses of cells 

 could be produced consisting entirely or almost entirely of cho- 

 anocytes. 2 The unpublished data concern the occurrence, in cul- 

 tures of such collar-cell masses, of apparently normal regen- 

 erating masses similar to those obtained by straining through fine 

 gauze. 3 This would appear to indicate that the chemotactic or 

 other attraction exerted by amcebocytes and dermal cells upon 

 each other is stronger than the similar attraction exerted upon 

 these same cells by choanocytes. 4 This would lead to the ob- 

 served differential separation of the bulk of the dermal and 

 amoeboid cells in preparations where they were present only in 

 very small relative number. 



These normal regenerates, as they may be called, in opposition 

 to collar-cell masses, were found in four of my twelve cultures 



1 Huxley, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (B), Vol. 202, 1911. 



2 Ibid., p. 177. 



3 Ibid., pp. 167-170. 

 * Ibid., p. 167. 



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