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for tlie ruler of the Comoro Islands, which are situated be- 

 tween the East Coast of Africa, and the North point of 

 Madagascar, or for the Sultan of the Island of Zanzibar. 

 Professor Owen says that " To the question put by almost 

 every one to whom the Euplectella is shown, as to how the 

 threads could have been so regularly, yet intricately inter- 

 woven, I have sometimes replied, that there has been no such 

 thing as interweaving in the case ; that no thread, as such, 

 was ever laid across another in the construction of the 

 Euplectella, that the analogy of human textile ftibrics does not 

 apply to this beautiful natural object. In artificial lace work, 

 the several stages of a complex result must bo taken in the 

 succession indictited by painful and exact calculation ; in 

 organic lace work, different stages are done at once. Thus it 

 is that the Divine works surpass those of man's utmost 

 ingenuity. The threads of the Euplectella were not first spun, 

 and then interwoven, but were formed as interwoven, the two 

 processes going on simultaneously or ' pari passu.' Just as in 

 the cancelleous texture of bone, the plates of bone are not first 

 formed, and then fitted to one another, as in building a house 

 of cards ; but the forming and the fitting go on together in 

 the course of molecular growth. I presume also that in the 

 beautiful object which we call the Euplectella we have but its 

 skeleton, and that in the living state the exquisite structure 

 of the flinty framework may be veiled by the delicate gelatin- 

 ous enveloping organic tissue." This beautiful sponge will 

 now be still more plentiful as it has recently been discovered 

 on the coast of Portugal, for in a letter in the Daily News 

 from that journal's special correspondent on board the 

 " Challenger," he says, " on the evening of 4th of March, 1873, 

 Professor Wyville Thompson gave a popular lecture on the 

 objects of the expedition, and after giving an account of the 

 very satisfactory results which they had already obtained, 

 the Professor described some of the most interesting objects 

 brought up by the dredge. One of the most interesting of 

 these objects was a beautiful specimen of the Philippine 

 Island Sponge {Euplectella asperrjillum) obtained off the coast 

 of Portugal at a depth of 2,000 fathoms. This is the first 

 specimen of this species of sponge ever found in any waters 

 but those of the Philippine Islands, and it was always believed 

 to be indigenous to them." 



Sydnev, New South Wales, 

 June 2nd, 1875. 



