484 
MISCELLANEOUS, | 
Note on Hyalonema boreale, Lovén. 
By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.BS. &e.. 
Dr. Loven, in the ‘ Ofversigt’ of the Swedish Academy for 1868, 
p- 105, describes and figures in detail a small sponge under the 
name of Hyalonema boreale. I hope shortly to receive a translation 
of this paper from the author, for insertion in the ‘ Annals;’ and I 
have no doubt it will contain many interesting observations, 
Believing that facts were accumulating that would prove the 
Hyalonema to be a coral, as I first described it, I was rather dismayed 
when I heard from my friend that he was describing a northern 
species of the genus that would prove it to be a sponge. On seeing 
the paper, my difficulty was to understand why so accurate and 
philosophical a zoologist as Dr. Lovén could have referred it to my 
genus Hyalonema. 
Hyalonema boreale, Lovén, is a typical siliceous sponge belonging 
to my family Halichondriade, of a pear-shape, with a single sub- 
central terminal oscule, with a long cylindrical pedicel, and fibrous 
roots. In general form and structure and in form of spicules it 
agrees so well with Halichondria ficus of Johnston, which is the 
type of my genus Ficulina (see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, p. 523), that 
I am inclined to refer it to that genus. But perhaps it may be 
necessary to form it into a separate genus, characterized by the 
length and structure of the pedicel’ and the absence of the pin- 
shaped spicule ; but at present I should call it Ficulina borealis. I 
cannot find that it presents a single character of the genus Hyalo- 
nema. In that genus the elongated spicules that form the coil, 
which induced me to call the genus Hyalonema (that is, glass rope), 
arise out of the centre of a sponge with a flat expanded base, by 
which it is attached to some marine bodies; and the sponge is 
furnished with numerous superficial oscules. Tn H. boreale, on the 
contrary, the sponge is clavate, with a pear-shaped body on a long 
slender cylindrical pedicel having a fibrous root. This pedicel is a 
true part of the sponge, and cannot in any way be compared with 
the coil of siliceous fibres that arises out of the upper part of the 
sponge in Hyalonema. 
- Dr. Lovén observes :—“ You will see that, if Iam not very wrong, 
all who have treated of the Hyalonema have inverted it, turned it 
upside down, and that the twisted rope, instead of rising out of 
the sponge, in reality is nothing but the remaining part of the 
stalk.” 
I fear Dr. Lovén has only had very imperfect specimens of the 
Japan Hyalonema to examine, or he could not have adopted such a 
theory. 
Dr. Wyville Thompson has informed me that he dredged a speci- 
men of Dr. Lovén’s Hyalonema boreale a couple of —_ ago, in 
Oban Bay. 
