SECOND GENERAL MEETING. 



Wednesday, August 24th. 



General Meeting of the Congress at 10.30 a.m., Professor 

 Newton in the chair. 



The Secretary read a letter from the German Ambassador in 

 London announcing that the Imperial Government had appointed 

 Privy Councillors of Government and Members of the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences, Professor Dr Mobius, Director of the Zoo- 

 logical Collection in the Natural History Museum at Berlin, and 

 Professor Dr Franz E. Schulze, Director of the Zoological Institute 

 of the Berlin University and President of the German Zoological 

 Society, to be Delegates of the Royal Prussian Department of 

 Education at the fourth meeting of the International Congress of 

 Zoology. Also Privy Aulic Councillor Professor Dr Wilhelm 

 Blasius to be a Delegate of the Brunswick Government, and 

 Professor Dr Kraepelin, Director of the Natural History Museum 

 at Hamburg to be the Representative of the Senate of Hamburg at 

 the Congress. 



A congratulatory telegram was received on 23 August from the 

 Vice-Rector of the University of Moscow. 



Professor Dr Franz E. Schulze having taken the chair, 

 Professor Yves Delage opened a discussion on the position of 

 Sponges in the Animal Kingdom with the following remarks : 



Having been selected by the committee to open the discussion, 

 it would perhaps have been my duty to give a general account of 

 the question. But, the subject being very wide, I beg leave to 

 limit my share in the discussion to one point, which, single as it is, 

 seems to me to answer the question, and which my own researches 

 have perhaps a little entitled me to treat. I am sure that the other 

 points will be treated far better by others, and I hope that the so 

 interesting historical part will be developed by Mr Minchin, who 

 has published a very accurate paper on the subject. 



If the question were only to assign the position of Sponges in 

 the series of the animal forms, it would be very easy to answer it. 



