102 Mr. H. J. Carter on the 



bodies here and there on the surface towards the base, which 

 are the capsules of one or two undescribed species of the vorti- 

 cellate infusorian " Freia,^^ that cannot be confounded with 

 the statoblasts (for they would be large enough to be seen 

 with the naked eye, and situated in the interior). 



Fulfilling all the other characters of a freshwater sponge, I 

 cannot help thinking that a specimen will be found sooner or 

 later in which the presence of the statoblast will complete 

 them. At the same time, if we are right in identifying the 

 statoblast with the winter-egg of the freshwater Polyzoon, 

 that flustraceous Indian species which I have long since 

 described and illustrated under the name of Hislopia lacustris 

 (' Annals,' 1858, vol. i. p. 169, pi. vii.) has not, to my know- 

 ledge, been found to possess them ; so it is not impossible that 

 this may be the case with Uruguaya corallioideSj of which I 

 therefore make " provisionally " a new genus. The speci- 

 mens mentioned have been carefully examined by different 

 people over and over again ; but in no instance has a trace of 

 a statoblast been found, with the exception of that noticed by 

 Dr. Bowerbank (No. 20, p. 23), which, I think, admits of 

 much doubt, not so much of the existence of the '' fragment " 

 as of its belonging to Uruguaya corallioides. 



Ohsei'vations. 



Although my classification is chiefly based upon the form 

 of the spicules of the statoblast, yet it is not to be assumed 

 that I have included all the species of the Spongillina that 

 have been discovered, but those only in which this means of 

 classification has been obtained, as will be seen by the follow- 

 ing short summary of Dr. W. Dybowski's elaborate account 

 of freshwater sponges from Lake Baikal, in Central Asia 

 (No. 32). 



The specimens were obtained by his brother Dr. Benedict 

 Dybowski and Herr W. Godleuski while in Siberia, and 

 have been divided into four species, with their varieties re- 

 spectively, under the generic name of ^^ Luhomirshia^^'' after 

 Prince Wladislau Lubomirski, thus — L. haicalensis, Pallas, 

 sp., L. hacilliferay n. sp., L. i^apyracea^ n. sp., and L. inter- 

 media^ n. sp. ; in all of which the statoblast (geramula) was 

 absent ; so that, whatever arrangement is made of them here- 

 after, the present one must rest upon their general form and 

 that of their skeleton- spicule respectively, which places them 

 much in the same position as the two original species (viz. 

 8. jiuviatilis and S. lacustris) before the spicules of their 

 statoblasts were discovered. 



