him in alcohol in his museum. Finding, however, that 

 Professor "Wyville Thomson had taken a large number of 

 specimens during his cruise in the " Lightning," and that he 

 intended publishing a memoir on the genus, I contented 

 myself with a simple record of its occurrence in a living 

 state ; of its mode of growth, viz. as Loven suggested, with 

 its siliceovis stem anchored in the mud, and with expressing 

 my opinion that the stem was truly a part of the sponge- 

 mass, and that the Polythoa was simply parasitic upon the 

 stem. Nor do I here intend to do more than call attention 

 to one or two peculiarities which it strikes me are to be met 

 with in the specimens that 1 have examined from I'ortugal, 

 and Avhich do not seem to exist ; at least, not exactly after 

 the same fashion in the specimens taken in the '' Light- 

 ning " and " Porcupine " expeditions. My knowledge of 

 these latter is based upon a very casiial examination of the 

 specimens taken by Professor Wyville Thomson -, and upon 

 a more careful examination of a beautiful little specimen, 

 about an inch and a half in length, most kindly given to me 

 by Professor Thomson. And in these remarks I do not 

 mean to anticipate at all the memoir on this genus which is 

 so impatiently expected, but rather to state what I know 

 about the differences between the specimens taken off Por- 

 tugal, and those off the west coast of Great Britain and 

 Ireland. 



Some of the Setubal specimens are of very great size ; the 

 stems of several measuring nearly two feet in length. In one 

 very perfect specimen the head consists of a large somewhat 

 oval mass, about eight inches broad in its long diameter, 

 and four inches across in its short diameter ; it is cup-shaped, 

 resembling somewhat the ordinary shape of a common 

 toilet sponge, and, like it, it is hollow on the inner surfoce or 

 on that portion where the " glass rope" ends. The outer sur- 

 face has been somewhat worn off by either lying on the mud 

 or from rough handling, and presents that appearance of wet 

 brown paper that must be familiar to all who have exa- 

 mined specimens of Hyaloneiua withthe sponge mass attached 

 from Japan. On opening out the sponge, the interior con- 

 cave surface appears to have remained uninjured, and here 

 will be seen a delicate network of spicules and sarcode, 

 lining the concavity and passing into the texture of the 

 sponge. A number of irregular large openings (oscula) are 

 also seen, and these are covered over with a delicate open 

 sarcode network, the edges of the meshes of which are thickly 

 lined by the spicules called ' spiculatc cruciform sjucules ' by 

 Dr. Bowerbank. These spicules are met with all through 



