Miscellaneous. 145 



as cored by the same form of spicule, induces me to place 

 these sponges among the Ectyonida. Had there been no fibre, 

 but the spicules massed felt-like as in the Suberitida, I should 

 have placed them, from their cork-like nature, among the latter. 

 Forms clathrous, branched, branches verticillately clathrous ; 

 mesenteric, or flat round and perfoliate, caulescent ; or vasi- 

 form, thin, open and round, or compressed flabellately ; stipitate. 



AXINELLIDA. 



Group 6. Multiformia. 



These have all the characters of the Plurifomia, with the 

 exception of the " echinating spicule," which here projects 

 outwards from the core or axial spicules, and not from the 

 surface of the fibre. Moreover both the axial and the sub- 

 echinating spicules are for the most part alike in form, viz. 

 simple acuate ; and the former frequently also the largest, 

 instead of the smallest as in the Pluriformia. 



Group 7. Durissima. 



For want of the sarcode (in which there might have 

 been a flesh-spicule), I do not know where to place these vase- 

 like skeletons, whose structure, composed of coarse, rigid, open 

 reticulated fibre cored with sub-pinlike fusiform acuates, is 

 very like that of an Australian sponge as yet undescribed 

 (whose flesh-spicule and texture very much resembles that of 

 Axos Cliftoni, Gray) ; but the absence of sarcode about these 

 skeletons prevents the identification. 



[To be continued.] 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



On the Occurrence of a Superorbital chain of Bones in the Arboricolse 

 (Wood-Partridges). By James "Wood-Mason, of Queen's College, 

 Oxford. 



In his elaborate paper " Od the Osteology of the Gallinaceous Birds 

 and Tinamous," read before the Linnean Society on November 25th, 

 1862, Professor W. Kitchen Parker announced the remarkable dis- 

 covery, in Tinamus robusius, " of a whole row of superorbital bones, 

 the like of which must be sought for, not amongst birds, but in a 

 group of creatures a long way down in the scale," viz. in the Skinks 

 and Blindworms. Further on in the same paper, the presence of a 

 Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 4. Vol. xvi. 10 



