Miscellaneous. 319 
tions of that Society), that I have detected coccoliths in abundance, 
and retaining their normal characters, in some of the fossil si*ceous 
earths of Barbadoes &c., and that coccospheres have been met 
with by me profusely in a living, or perhaps it would be more safe 
to say, a recent condition. in material collected at the surface of the 
open seas of the trop’es, and also in dredgings from shoal water ob- 
tained off the south coast of England. 
It only remains for me to add that, so far as the chemical nature 
of these bodies can be ascertained by reagents and the polariscope, 
there is reason to believe that carbonate of lime enters largely into 
their composition ; and they furnish us with another striking ex- 
ample, in which simplicity of structure has enabled an organism to 
weather the vicissitudes to which the surface of the globe has been 
subject, and under the operation of which more complex forms have’ 
ceased to exist.— Atheneum for Sept. 19, 1868. 
Transporting Fish alive. 
Mr. Moore, the Curator of the Liverpool Free Museum, has suc- 
ceeded in importing some living fish from the River Plate, the first 
live fish that he has received from the south of the equator. Some 
English fish sent-out by the same captain arrived safely; and he 
left Liverpool on the 11th of this month with another series of fish. 
They were sent out and imported in a common fish-globe suspended 
like a cabin-lamp, in gimbals. 
There are now exhibited in the Liverpool Museum two catfish, 
three pomotis, two species of Cyprinus, four axolotls, and a Proteus 
that were imported from New York by the same method.—J. E. 
Gray. 
On Tetilla euplocamos and Hyalonema boreale. 
By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S. &e. 
It is a curious coincidence that three small-peduncled capitate 
sponges should be discovered about the same time, viz. :— 
1. Hyalonema boreale, Lovén, from the North Sea. 
2. Lovenia boreale of Bocage, coast of Portugal. 
3. Tetilla euplocamos, Oscar Schmidt, Spongien von Algier,t.5. f.10, 
from Brazil. 
There can be no doubt that they are all distinct species; and the 
spicules show that the North-Sea and Portuguese species must be 
referred, according to my views, to different families—the one to 
Halichondriade and the other to Tethyade. Unfortunately Tetilla 
is not regularly described by Dr. Oscar Schmidt. 
It is curious that Dr. O. Schmidt, like Dr. Lovén and M. Bocage, 
compares the small-peduncled sponge to Hyalonema. The Tetilla 
was sent to him from Brazil by M.F. Miiller. He observes, ‘The 
pear-shaped body is like Tvthya,‘and the peduncle is like Hyalo- 
nema; the body is formed of clustered spicules with abundance of 
thrice-forked spicules, the forks projecting, and covering the surface 
