STRUCTURE OF HALIPHYSEMA TUMANOWICZII. 477 



of sponges. Further, he described and figured a number of 

 egg-like bodies as adhering to the endoderm and formed by 

 a modification of its cells. These were regarded as ova. 

 Excepting for the absence of pores in the body-wall, the 

 structure thus described corresponded very closely with that 

 of the simplest examples of the Porifera or Sponges. In 

 consideration of their wanting the pores characteristic of 

 Sponges, Professor Haeckel proposed to place the genus 

 Haliphysema of Bowerbank and his own new genus Gas- 

 trophysema in a new great group of Coelenteric animals, to 

 which he gave the name '' Physemaria.'^ The Physemaria 

 were stated to represent the simplest two-cell-layered forms 

 of life from which all the Metazoa (or Enterozoa) have been 

 derived. 



As such the Physemaria have been admitted into text-books 

 {e.g. Gegenbaur's 'Grundriss ^), and have formed the subject 

 of many a discourse when the principles of phylogeny and 

 the germ-layer theory have been expounded to zoological 

 students. 



Quite recently a doubt has been raised as to whether 

 the " Physemaria " as a group have any existence at all. 

 We are, in fact, asked to believe that there are hco sets of 

 organisms exactly alihe in the details of their external struc- 

 ture, viz. the cornucopia-like tube with its disc-like base and 

 its constituent spicules, «&;c., but differing from one another 

 in the structure of their soft parts — the one being Proto- 

 zoa, the other sponge-like multicellular Ccelenterates, 



The matter has been brought to this pass by a series of 

 papers in the ' Annals and Mag. of Nat. History,' con- 

 tributed during the past year by Mr. Carter, the Rev. A. 

 M. Norman and Mr. Savile Kent, and the difficulty of the 

 position will be in no way diminished by the observations 

 which I have myself made and am about to record. Mr. 

 Carter, the original discoverer of Haeckel's Gastropliysema 

 scopula, protests that the chambered nature of the shell of 

 his little organism, and the extrusion of protoplasm in the 

 form of pseudopodia from broken but living specimens, 

 proves them to be Foraminifera and not Coelentera. At 

 the same time Mr, Carter is not able to state from observa- 

 tion that his specimens are devoid of an axial cavity lined 

 by flagellate collar-cells. 



Mr. Norman, on the other hand, after examining Mr. 

 Carter's specimens of Gastrophysema (= Squamulma) 

 scopula, and comparing them with Dr. Bowerbank's type- 

 specimens of Haliphysema, and with other specimens and 

 supposed diverse species of that genus, comes to the con- 



