o() Procrf'dltxjx of flic Roipd Sov'tety of Victoria. 



Introductory to the Stud}- and Classification of the 

 Spongida."* The publication of these notes appears to have 

 been suggested to Mr. Carter by the obvious necessity of 

 having some definite system upon which to arrange his 

 numerous species. The plan of the " Notes" was a compre- 

 hensive one. They were to consist of three parts, and were 

 to form a kind of general guide to the whole suliject, which 

 was rapidly becoming more and more complex. The three 

 parts were to be — (1) Anatomy and Physiology ; (2) Pro- 

 posed Classification of the Spc^ngida ; (3) A furtlier Division 

 into Svd)-families, Genera and Species, so far as our 

 knowledge extends. 



The fii'st part was a genei-al account of the anatomy and 

 physiology of sponges, including those structures, viz., the 

 skeletal elements, upon which the subsequent classification 

 was based. The second part contains Mr. Carter's scheme of 

 classification, which is sufficiently well known to all 

 spongologists, but which has never obtained general 

 acce})tance. He himself, howevei', has adhered to it syste- 

 matically, and its appearance at this stage was therefore of 

 great im])ortance to the student of his papers. The 

 promised third part, which should have been a kind of 

 coping stone to the whole structure, most unfortunately 

 never appeared. After the publication of the second part, 

 Mr. Carter returned to his work on the Porcupine Sponges, 

 the desciiptions of which he completed in 1870. 



Between 1876 and 1885 there appeared a long series of 

 miscellaneous papers on sponges, which need not here be 

 specially noticed. In 1885, however, an event took place 

 of special interest to Victorian Naturalists, namely, the 

 appeai-ance of Mr. Carter's first pa[)er-f- on the splendid series 

 of sponges from the neighbourhood of Port Phillip Heads 

 and Western Port, collected and sent to England by Mr. J. 

 Bracebridge Wilson, M.A. Henceforth, Mr. Carter devoted 

 almost all his energy to working out and describing these 

 sponges, and he published a series of fifteen papers u})on 

 them in the Aruials and Magazine of Natural History. In 

 these fifteen papers he records 211 species and varieties, 

 nearly all of which were new to science and all collected by 

 Mr. Bracebridge Wilson. 



After the conclusion of this laborious work, in 1887, Mr. 

 Carter published two noteworthy papers of a more strictly 



* A. M. N. H. Ser. 4. Vol. xvi, pp. 1, \M. 

 t A. M. N. H. Ser. 5. Vol. xv, p. 107. 



