376 Mr. H. J. Carter on the Nutritive and 



of the cast-off parts of organisms from which the nutrient 

 parts have been abstracted (tb. p. 98). 



In 1857 (while still at Bombay, and totally ignorant of 

 what Lieberkiihn subsequently published at Berlin in the 

 month of June of that year, from his communications to the 

 " Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde," on the 6th Sept. 

 and 2nd Dec. 1856) I stated, among numerous other obser- 

 vations on the development of Spongilla from the seed-like 

 body, that, on watching the feeding of it with carmine 

 under the microscope (with immersed object-glass, of course), 

 the particles may be seen to pass into the ampullaceous 

 sacs (" Wimperkorbe "), where they are "instantly en- 

 closed by the sponge-cell (spongozoon) on which they 

 inpinge" (no. 6, p. 28) ; that the colouring-matter then is 

 "wholly confined" to the ampullaceous sacs, and that 

 when the latter are torn to pieces it is found to be con- 

 tained in their cells (spongozoa), some of which are mono- 

 and others unciliated ; further, that after a little time the 

 circulatory system of the young Spongilla becomes sus- 

 pended synchronously with the closure of its now single 

 osculum and the retraction of the tubular process which 

 supports it ; this lasts for about a " quarter of an hour," 

 when the circulation is resumed the proboscidian process 

 reproduced, the osculum at its extremity reopened, and 

 that portion of the particles of carmine which may be as- 

 sumed to have been deprived of their nutritive parts may 

 be seen to leave the ampullaceous sacs, one after another, 

 and, passing along the canals of the excretory system, finally 

 to rush out at the osculum (no. 6) *. Here, then, it was 

 naturally implied, rather than stated, that this was at least 

 one of the ways in which nourishment got into the sponge. 



It is also desirable to note that, among the carmine- 

 bearing cells torn out from the ampullaceous sacs, there 

 were unciliated as well as monociliated cells, and to con- 

 nect this with the fact that shortly after a monociliated 

 sponge-cell is eliminated from the sponge it loses its active, 

 living, monadic form, and, retracting its cilium (which is but 

 a hair-like extension of its own polymorphic body), assumes 

 the more passive, amoeboid one, which is really the only visi- 

 ble characteristic distinction between the monociliated cell of 

 the ampullaceous sac and the cell of the parenchyma. Hence, 

 whether the foreign material be in one or the other, the nutri- 

 tive process may be assumed to be the same in both. 



In 1857, also, Lieberkiihn stated that on feeding Spon- 



* This paper, in importance and amount of fact, is, to me, the best I 

 have ever published on sponges. 



