292 Dr. J.E. Gray on the “ Glass-Rope”’ Hyalonema. 
The only pretence of a reason that Dr. Bowerbank gives for 
considering “the basal sponge” an “undoubted part of the 
animal” is, that “the sponge in the specimens that I described 
and the one attached to the specimen at Bristol are identical in 
structure,’—as if it were not to be expected that the sponge 
from Japan to which the various specimens of the Japan coral 
are attached would most probably be of the same species. (See 
vol. i. p. 196.) 
On referring to the explanation of the plates in the first vo- 
lume, I see my suspicions are verified. Dr. Bowerbank observes, 
“ Figure 371, plate 35, represents a portion of the great. cloacal 
column, exhibiting part of the spiral axial fasciculus surrounded 
by the remains of the dermal (!) coat with numerous oscula 
projecting from its surface. Copied from the ‘ Zoological Pro- 
ceedings’ for 1857” (vol. i. 197). 
Unfortunately Dr. Bowerbank does not seem to have con- 
sidered it necessary to examine the specimens, but simply copies 
the plate, or to examine other genera of corals; or he would have 
found that what he calls oscula are, as I called them in the de- 
scription he quotes, polype-cells containing polypes having ten- 
tacles and all the internal organization, including a distinctly 
plicated stomach, exactly like the zoanthoid polype named Poly- 
thua or Corticaria. Other naturalists, as Dr. Max Schultze, who 
have considered the axis as belonging to the sponge, have 
avoided this extraordinary error, and have regarded “the dermal 
coat with oscula” of Dr. Bowerbank as a parasitic Polythoa. 
Dr. Bowerbank also observes, “There is a close approximate 
alliance to the forms of the cloacal appendages of Hyalonema in 
the corresponding organs of the British genus Ciocalypta, Bower- 
bank” (vol.i. p. 197). If this comparison is correct, possibly 
Ciocalypta is not a sponge; and the figure (vol. i. t. 30. f. 860 
& 861) renders it doubtful. But all the descriptions of this 
work are so indistinct and crowded with technicalities peculiar 
to the author, that they are very difficult to understand, and 
render a new examination of the species and a new work on the 
subject requisite. 
I am not aware that any reason has been assigned for the 
theory above referred to, unless the enigmatical description of 
the genus above quoted of Dr. Bowerbank can be considered 
one; and I can only suppose that it arose in M. Valenciennes’s 
mind from the fact of the spicula being siliceous and in che- 
mical composition like the spicula of the sponge to which some 
of the Japanese specimens are attached. 
Professor Max Schultze enters into a long description of the 
spicula of the sponge, and figures several of them; but I cannot 
see what bearing that has on the subject; for he does not 
