in reply to Dr. J. E. Gray, 399 



he would have found that what he calls oscula are, as I called 

 them in the description he quotes, poly pe~cells containing polypes 

 haying tentacles and all the internal organization, including a 

 .distinctly plicated stomach, exactly like the zoanthoid polype 

 named Pohjthoa or Corticaria." How the stomach of the sup-, 

 posed polype can be like that of Corticaria, a genus of Coleo- 

 pterous insects, is beyond my comprehension ; but it may be 

 that the author meant to write Corticifera, a generic name 

 of Lesueur for Zoanthus. The assertion that I did not seem 

 to have considered it necessary to examine the specimens is also 

 inaccurate ; and it must have escaped the memory of Dr. Gray 

 that in 1860 the specimens alluded to were, by his direction, 

 placed in my hands for examination, that for two days, during 

 nearly four hours of each, I was engaged in the Entomological 

 Department in a careful microscopical examination of their 

 anatomical structures, and that a portion of the results of those 

 examinations were published in the second part of my paper "On 

 the Anatomy and Physiology of the Spongiadse" in the 'Philo- 

 sophical Transactions^ for 1861, and were illustrated by no less 

 than thirteen figures in two of the plates accompanying that 

 Part. In plate xxxi., figures 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, and in plate 

 xxxvi. figures 12, 20, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38, are all from the 

 specimen of Hyalonema in the British Museum, excepting fig. 7, 

 plate xxxi., which is from the specimen in the Bristol Museum. 

 I did not deem it necessary to refigur^ the specimen in the 

 British Museum, as it had been so accurately and beautifully 

 drawn by Mr. Ford for the 'Proc. Zool. Soc.^ for 1857, plate ix. 

 Radiata. 



Dr. Gray blames me for supposed hasty conclusions and 

 inaccuracies, and at the same time exhibits the like symptoms 

 in his own observations: thus in page 288 he writes Halichondra 

 in place of Halichondria, Alcyonellum (p. 293) instead of Alcyon- 

 cellum, and Euplatella in place of Euplectella, and, throughout the 

 whole of the paper, Polythoa^ apparently instead of Polyzoa, or 

 of Palythoa, Lamouroux, a genus of Zoanthidse. 



Dr. Gray adopts the idea of M. Barboza du Bocage, that the 

 protuberant bodies from the bark of Hyalonema are allied to 

 Zoanthus, and that they bear on their summits the tentacles of 

 the polypes ; and the figure of those parts by M. Barboza du 

 Bocage in the * Proceedings of the Zoological Society ' for 1864, 

 plate xxxiii. fig. 3, if he thinks fit to assume that as a correct 

 representation of tentacula, would seem to justify him in that 

 idea; but a little consideration would have informed him that 

 the tentacles of polypes are always situated on the oral portion 

 of the animal, and not on the surrounding portions of the 



* [For this mistake the printer is to blame. It should have been 

 Palythoa throughout, instead of Polythoa. — Ed.] 



r 



