and Nomenclature of Sponges. 171 
of the late Mr. Ingall, formerly in the Bank of England; an 
excellent microscopist and collector of sponges, fossils, &e. ; 
Collingsia after Mrs. Collings, of Sark, near Guernsey, who 
has inherited from her father, Dr. Lukis, his love for natural 
history and the desire to extend it. 
During the time this paper has been in type, Dr. Wyville 
‘Thomson, in the ‘ Annals’ for February, p. 114, has proposed 
another arrangement of Sponges. He modestly calls it “a 
slight modification of Dr. Schmidt’s arrangement ;” but any 
reader, even Dr. Schmidt himself, would find it impossible to 
detect the characters assigned to the families in the very ge- 
neral and indistinct comparative characters assigned by Dr. 
Schmidt himself to the groups as printed in a previous page 
of the paper. ‘These characters show the effect of Dr. Bower- 
bank’s researches and figures, and my explanation of them. 
This arrangement is a step in advance; but it would be better 
if the step had been made from the examination of specimens 
instead of from the study of books. 
Dr. Oscar Schmidt simply undertook to describe the Sponges 
of a limited fauna, and only formed an arrangement of them, 
never intending it for a general system. His work is a ve 
excellent one of its kind, just such a one as we should expect 
from an experienced and educated naturalist on Sponges, after 
the publication of Dr. Bowerbank’s essay in the ‘ Philosophical 
Transactions.’ 
In consequence of Dr. Wyville Thomson adopting Dr. 
Schmidt’s arrangement, which does not contain several groups 
_of exotic Sponges, he has found it requisite to introduce what 
he calls a new order. His order ViITREA is only a new name 
given to Dr. Bowerbank’s Suborders VI. and VII. (which I had 
called Coralliospongie) with the genus Huplectella added, but 
deformed and its character rendered prolix by trying to make 
it include Hyalonema! as his genus Habrodictyon is only a 
name given to my section of the family Euplectellade con- 
taining the genera Corbitella and Heterotella. 
I have always considered that the characters that. Dr. O. 
Schmidt gives to his families are the weakest part of his work. 
He perhaps felt that the very limited number of species he 
had examined did not justify his entering into greater detail. 
Three of his families were well recognized groups before his 
time; he added Gumminex and Halisarcine for a few ve 
fleshy Sponges. Dr. W. Thomson observes that “the horn 
Sponges (Ceratospongie) and the Gumminex are so nearly 
allied that they can be distinguished by comparative characters 
only.” The last group is founded on a mistake, as Dr. Bower- 
