Introductory to the Study and Classiticatiou of the 

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

 been suggested to Mr. Carter by the obvious necessity of 

 Iiaving some definite system upon whicli 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 subject, which 

 was rapidly becoming more and more complex. The three 

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

 posed Classification of the Spongida ; (3) A further Division 

 into Sub-families, Genera and Species, so far as our 

 knowledge extends. 



The first part was a general account of the anatomy and 

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

 skeletal elements, upon which the subsequent classification 

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

 classification, which is sufficiently well known to all 

 spongologists, but which has never obtained general 

 acceptance. He himself, however, has adhered to it syste- 

 maticall}^, and its appearance at this stage was therefore of 

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

 prt)mised thiid part, which should have been a kind of 

 coping stone to the whole structure, most unfortunately 

 never appeared. Aftei' the publication of the second part, 

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

 the descriptions of which he completed in 1876. 



Between 1870 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 Victoriau Naturalists, namely, the 

 appearance of Mr. Carter's first paper-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 Ins energy to working out and describing these 

 sponges, and he published a series of fifteen papers upon 

 them in the Annals 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 (jf 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, 126. 

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



