MR SAVILLE KENT ON SPONGES. t'J 



altogether eliminated or distorted. What I would urge is the 

 abandonment of the pickle bottle and the recourse to a thorough 

 and painstaking investigation of the living aspects and phenomenon 

 of the structures that have now for so long and yet so vainly sought 

 for a resting-place at the hands of biologists in the zoological 

 system. 



I am sanguine enough to anticipate that the results of such 

 a thoroughgoing investigation will proceed a long way towards 

 releasing the sponges from that ill-deserved position of doubtful 

 parentage and relationship which it is scarcely to the credit of 

 biologists they are permitted to occupy in this penultimate year of 

 the nineteenth century. 



Prof F. E. SCHULZE bezweifelt, ob sich nach den jetzt vorlie- 

 genden Resultaten der Embryologie die systematische Stellung 

 der Spongien sicher bestimmen lasst und ist der Ansicht, dass man 

 einstweilen die Spongien als radiaere Coelenteria neben die Cnidaria 

 zu stellen hat. 



5—2 



