Dr. J. E. Gray on the Classification of Sponges. 455 



cies. I suspect that that has been the case frequently, espe- 

 cially in the species of Hynieniacidon, which, according to his 

 account, have knobbed spicules." I)r. Bowerbank does not 

 mention them in the character of Oceanopia. 



A friend observes : — " Indeed it is remarkable that one of 

 the most practical men of the day in the examination of 

 sponges, viz. Dr. 0. Schmidt, has failed to identify the greater 

 part of the s]5onges described by Dr. Bowerbank in his 

 ' British Spongiadffi,' as may be seen by his attempt to syno- 

 nymize the latter in his ' Atlantisch. Spongienfauna.' " 



Surely the having the name of " Bowerbank " after each of 

 the species can have had no influence in causing him to 

 alter the generic names of the greater part of these sponges, 

 and to make species of what I regarded as varieties ; but it 

 does look very suspicious to see the name of " Bowerbank " 

 at full length after all the species but one in this mono- 

 graph, placed there solely because he has changed the name. 

 The same occurrence of this name may be observed in the 

 work on British Sponges, where there are whole pages of 

 names with the word '^ Bowerbank " at full length after each 

 species. Botanists have observed that the having " mihi " or 

 'Sz, spy after a name has influenced the manufacture of many 

 nominal S23ecies ; but that is not to be compared to the above 

 system. 



On a former occasion I have stated that Dr. Bowerbank 

 assured me, in the presence of three other naturalists, in such 

 a decided manner that there could be no misunderstanding, 

 that the specimen of Macandreioia azorica that I described 

 and figured Avas certainly the type of his manuscript species 

 DactylocaJyx Prattii. In this work he describes Dactylocalyx 

 Prattii for the first time, and gives East Indies, without any 

 doubt, as the locality ; but he afterwards states that Mr. Pratt 

 " was not quite certain of his locality," at which I am not 

 astonished, as my poor friend, for many of the latter years of 

 his life, had entirely lost his memory — even more so than Dr. 

 Bowerbank (for that is the excuse that his friends make for 

 many of his statements) ; but he afterwards says that he found 

 in the British Museum another specimen of the same sponge, 

 brought from Formosa by Mr. Swinhoe (a sponge which I had 

 called Theonella, P. Z. S. 1868, p. 5Qb), and states that the 

 acquisition of " this specimen from Formosa is in favour of 

 Mr. Pratt's belief that the type one was really an East-Indian 

 specimen ;" and now he has described the Formosan specimen 

 as D. Prattii^ Bowerbank. 



I do not see the force of this argument. Does Dr. Bower- 

 bank think that Formosa in the Pacific Ocean is a part of 



