485 



LXIII. — Notes on Dr. Bowerhank's Paper on Ilyalonema. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S. 



I HAVE no desire to enter into a controversy with Dr. Bower- 

 bank on this subject, for I have always highly estimated him as 

 an enthusiastic collector, a good microscopist, and always willing 

 to communicate all he knows ; and 1 shall be glad to study his 

 promised paper, premising that I am not aware that there is 

 much to be added on the subject to what has been said by Dr. 

 Max Schultze, Dr. Brandt, and Senhor Bocage. At present I 

 only wish to explain what Dr. Bowerbank calls my " misrepre- 

 sentations.^' 



To establish the first, Dr. Bowerbank, doubtless unintention- 

 ally, misquotes my paper, and makes me appear to say what I 

 did not intend to convey. After referring to the zoologists who 

 have regarded the "glass rope" of the coral as part of the 

 of the sponge, in a separate paragraph I observed, "Dr. Bower- 

 bank, adopting the same view," &c.; and, as I am always anxious 

 to fairly represent what any one who difiiers from me on a scien- 

 tific subject has to say, I quoted at length the characters that 

 Dr. Bowerbank reprints in his note, and his other observations 

 on the genus. So I do not see how I could misrepresent him. 



Secondly, Dr. Bowerbank says I " misrepresent him," as I 

 ought to have recollected that he examined the specimens of 

 Hyalonema in the British Museum in 1860. I may observe 

 that I do not keep any note or record of what specimen any 

 visitor examines. Dr. Bowerbank appears to have confined his 

 examination to the structure of the spicula, and it is only the 

 spicula that are figured in the plates in the 'Philosophical 

 Transactions' which he quotes. I can hardly call such a study 

 of the specimens " a careful microscopical examination of their 

 anatomical structure." If Dr. Bowerbank has examined anato- 

 mically the animal structure, it is most extraordinary that he 

 did not discover that what he calls " the oscula " of his " cloacal 

 system " were social Zoanthi with plicated stomachs, retractile 

 conical tentacles, and all the anatomical structure of that type 

 of animals — more especially as Professor Brandt, in his essay 

 published in 1859, a year before Dr. Bowerbank's examination, 

 had described and figured these parts in detail ; and Brandt's 

 observations have more recently been confirmed by Senhor 

 Bocage. 



Dr. Bowerbank is unfortunate in his observations on my 

 paper. Thus he observes, " The fact of the presence of siliceous 

 spicula in the inner coat of what he [Dr. Gray] terms the bark 

 of Hyalonema should have warned him that it could not belong 

 to cither of the genera ' Corticaria ' (qu. Corticifera) or ZoaU' 



