269 



On the so-called Boring or Burrowing Sponge. 



By J. G. Waller. 



{Read September 22nd, 1871.) 



Cliona celata (Grant). Halichondria Celata (Johnston). 

 Hymeniacidon Celata (Bowerbank). 



There is nothing more commonly witnessed in historical literature, 

 or in the records of science than the persistency of error. This is 

 especially the case if it contains something of the romantic or of 

 the marvellous. A writer of credit puts forward a statement ; he 

 may, or he may not, give an authority for it : let it be accepted 

 without dispute, it gets copied by one writer after another and 

 passes as an established fact. At length an inquisitive eye, by 

 chance perhaps, happens to refer to authorities, and it is found, 

 either that they are inconclusive, or, as it has often happened, ab- 

 solutely disprove the statement which has long been accredited. 

 In fact, though it is not nattering, man has much of the sheep in 

 his composition, and likes to follow a bell-wether. 



The errors and the dreams of science have been very numerous. 

 We have had the flints on the upper chalk formation attempted to 

 be accounted for as the coprolites of whales; the 16th and 17th 

 century gives us the wonderful story of the goose which developed 

 from barnacles, and now we have a " burrowing or boring sponge." 

 I say now, for the delusion has been ably exposed by Dr. Bower- 

 bank, in his admirable monograph on the Spongiadse, and I should 

 have considered it impertinent, on my part, to have entered into the 

 subject had 1 not recently heard an eminent professor of geology 

 assert the old story, which is also reproduced circumstantially in a 

 very popular work on the microscope, and in its last edition. It is 

 extraordinary how completely it has been accepted, and how widely 

 disseminated. 



It is asserted in Ray Green's useful manual on the " Protozoa," 



Journ. Q. M. C. No. 18. t 



