86 Miscellaneous. 



inferred that they were the same species. How Dr. Gray could have 

 fallen into such misapprehensions I cannot possibly imagine. As to 

 the locality of D. Prattii, I can only say that the sponge was pre- 

 sented to me by my friend the late Mr. S. P. Pratt, with a drawer 

 full of other sponges ; and when I called his attention to the speci- 

 men, and wished to know its locality, he told me the whole of them 

 were sent to him by his son from the East Indies, where he then 

 held a high official appointment. I may also state that among the 

 siliceo-fibrous sponges in the gallery of the British Museum there is 

 a specimen labelled " Siliceous Sponge from Formosa, by Swinhoe, 

 65. 12. 15." It is in a fine state of preservation, and is undoubtedly 

 the same species as the type specimen of D. Prattii, agreeing with 

 that sponge in all its structural characters. 



Dr. Gray accounts for some of my supposed errors by stating 

 that " I suspect that these errors arose from Dr. Bowerbank's 

 habit of working from microscopic preparations often made by his 

 friends Mr. Tyler and Mr. Lee, as well as by himself, from fragments 

 which they obtained from various collections, under different names, 

 without Dr. Bowerbank taking the trouble to compare the specimens 

 from which they were obtained." This mode of accounting for my 

 supposed sins of omission and commission is very benevolent and 

 very ingenious of the learned Doctor ; only it does not happen to be 

 true. I have never figured a single specimen that has been prepared 

 or mounted by either my friend Capt. Tyler or Mr. Lee. The former 

 I have freely supplied with specimens to mount for his own informa- 

 tion ; and I had not the pleasure of knowing the latter gentleman 

 until some years after the publication of my papers on the Anatomy 

 and Physiology of the Spongiadae in the ' Transactions of the Royal 

 Society.' All my figured specimens, excepting two or three, are 

 from sponges in my own possession or in the cabinets of public in- 

 stitutions, and have been mounted by myself. 



I will not follow Dr. Gray through numerous other hasty asser- 

 tions ; but there is one in page 172 which it maybe as well to note. 

 The author writes, " Both Geodiadae and Spongilladae are well defined 

 recognized groups : the latter lives only in fresh water, and is green, 

 all other sponges being marine and never green." Has the Doctor 

 really never seen specimens of our commonest British sponge, Hali- 

 chondria panicea, growing on the rocks between high- and low- 

 water mark, and often of a deep green colour, and varying from that 

 through every shade of green to yellow? Numerous Australian 

 sponges are also decidedly green -coloured in their living state. 



There is an amusing inconsistency in the learned Doctors style of 

 criticism. He blames Prof. Thomson for having concocted a new 

 method of arrangement and new names, having only a book-know- 

 ledge of his subject, forgetting that he himself formed his own new 

 system of arranging the Spongiadae principally from having cut up 

 the plates of the copy of the ' British Sponges ' which I had pre- 

 sented to him, and rearranged the figures in them to suit his own 

 fancy, without having seen a single living or dead specimen of the 

 sponges the names of which he quotes ; and, in consequence of this 



