36 BRITISH SPONGIAD^l. 



united by a series of uninterrupted links, while on the 

 other hand Technitella appeared more closely allied to 

 Haliphysema than to any other animal known to me. 



Shortly after this Mr. Kent, who felt most anxious 

 to see with his own eyes what Haeckel had described 

 and figured of the animal of Haliphysema, sought dili- 

 gently for and succeeded in finding it at Jersey. 

 After most careful examination of living examples, he 

 astonished zoologists by a paper, in which he stated 

 that a " rigid examination with the aid of a magnifying 

 power of from 800 to as much as 2000 diameters, failed 

 to reveal the existence of any structure corresponding 

 with the collar-bearing flagellate zooids of ordinary 

 sponges" such as had been figured by Haeckel. On 

 the other hand, he witnessed such extended, delicate, 

 and anastomosing pseudopodial action of the sarcode in 

 the living animal, and altogether such a structure of 

 the granular mass which occupied the whole of the 

 interior, as to convince him that Haliphysema must be 

 and could be nothing else than a Foraminifer. 



Mr. Ray Lankester commenced his observations 

 under the impression that it was impossible that the 

 Professor of Jena could have so accurately figured and 

 described what had in reality no existence ; and he 

 presumed, therefore, that what Haeckel had witnessed 

 had escaped the observation of Mr. Kent. After close 

 and most careful investigation of numerous living and 

 preserved examples sent to him from Jersey, he found 

 Mr. Kent's observations to be confirmed in every par- 

 ticular, and that the " core " or central portion of Hali- 

 physema within the crust of spicula and sand grains 

 " is a continuous mass of protoplasm, exhibiting no 

 central cavity and devoid of ' cell-structure.' Scat- 



