592 Chronicles of Science. [Oct., 
developing them) represent amongst to-day’s fauna, the Protracheata 
of the past. Surely it is a pity that the Ray Society did not adopt 
the suggestion of Professor Newton, at Norwich, to translate so 
interesting and suggestive a work as that of Haeckel. Rash his 
speculations may be, but they are of high interest, of much use, and 
are, at least, noble efforts to grasp truth. 
The Glass-Rope Sponge-—The turmoil caused by this beautiful 
organism among systematic zoologists has taken a new direction. 
Professor Lovén has described a sponge which he calls Hyalonema 
boreale—placing it thus in the same genus as the Glass-rope; and 
from the examination of this Boreal species he concludes that every- 
one else has studied the Japanese sponge upside down. The long 
glassy fibres are, he says, merely the remains of a long pedicle 
which was attached to a rock, and on which the mass of the sponge 
was supported. Dr. Gray protests against this inference. Lovén’s 
species is not a Hyalonema at all, but merely a new and interesting 
pedicellate form, to which there are many similar species. ‘The 
Rey. A. M. Norman has pointed out several of these, and has 
shown how their spicule differ znter se, and from those of Lovén’s 
Hyalonema boreale, which is also very different in this respect 
from the true Japanese Hyalonema, or from the reputed Lusi- 
tanian species obtained off Portugal. 
A Vwiparous Echinoderm.—Dr. Ed. Grube describes an Echi- 
noid from the Chinese Seas under the name of Anochanus, which 
actually produces young Kchini, like itself, having spines, feet, 
and even pedicellariz. These young, though having a general 
resemblance to the parent, are not quite the same in detail, and 
must undergo modification with growth. This discovery is of 
remarkable interest, for it adds one more to the many diverse 
methods of reproduction known among Echinoderms, and completes 
the parallel which they present to the Worms. We now know, in 
both groups, of animals laymg eggs which produce embryos 
developing directly into the adult form; of others which present 
strange larval conditions which either become completely altered, 
so as to form the adults, or bud off from their interiors a small 
mass of living tissue which becomes the adult, leaving the larva 
to perish. We know, in both groups, of hermaphrodites and of 
dizecious species, and now we have added a viviparous form of 
Echinoderm, such as was previously observed in some Nemertian 
worms. We have yet to discover among the Echinoderms the 
various modifications of asexual reproduction, by pseudova, fission, 
or true parthenogenesis ; the first two of which methods (especially 
fission) are so well known among worms. 
Parasites of the Sea-cucumbers.—A large division of the Holo- 
thuride abound in parasites, and oddly enough all these parasites 
belong to groups in which parasitism is quite a rare exception. In 
