from the N.W. Coast of Spain. 103 



after Dr. Veronge, who gave liim the specimen ; and the fibre 

 is well characterized by Lens Aldous's figure (Annals, pi. 13. 

 fig. 7, I. c), though much better, by the same artist, in 

 Dr. Bowerbank's ' British Spongiadje ' (pi. 13. fig. 266, 1864) ; 

 and so far the priority of " naming " is in favour of Dr. 

 Bowerbank. But when we find Dr. Bowerbank in the fol- 

 lowing page identifying his "Verongia^^ in a fossilized state 

 with the conferva-like glauconite " in the green agates, mis- 

 called in commerce jaspers, from India" (which, to my certain 

 knowledge, come from geodes in the decomposed trap of 

 Western India) , one cannot help being struck by the inferiority 

 of mental power on the one hand and the sharp-sightedness 

 on the other — much after the fable of the shoemaker who rose 

 greatly in the estimation of the sculptor when he pointed out 

 ■the absence of the shoe-string in his statue, but sunk lamen- 

 tably in it afterwards when he made observations on the 

 higher art. 



So much for Dr. Bowerbank's part in the matter. Now 

 let us direct om' attention to the work of De Fonbressin and 

 Michelotti {op. cit.), who collected the sponges of the Carib- 

 bean Sea on the sj)ot, and described six species, with modest 

 references to all those who seemed to have noticed the like 

 before them — giving to the whole the generic name of " Luf- 

 faria^'' drawn from the great resemblance of the horny skeleton 

 of these sponges to the fibrous mass of a species of the cucur- 

 bitacean genus Luffa which remains after the skin and soft 

 parts have rotted away, and which they also state to be used 

 in the " colonies " of the West Indies, where real sponges are 

 not at hand. Further, we find that, recognizing the whole 

 bearing of the family generally towards the rest of the Spon- 

 giadee, elementarily (that is in the structm-e of the fibre) as 

 well as en masse ^ they finally placed the genus in the third 

 tribe of their second family of sponges, under the designation 

 of " Spongice homogence.''^ 



Is it extraordinary, then, after contrasting thus the value of 

 the contributions to our knowledge of this genus, respectively 

 named by Dr. Bowerbank and the authors last mentioned, that 

 we should find Schmidt (Atlantisch. Spongienfauna, p. 30) 

 ignore the former altogether, and accept the name of " Luf- 

 faria^'' given to this genus by De Fonbressin and Michelotti ? 

 nor resting here, but also synonymizing Dr. Bowerbank's 

 Verongia zetlandica^ not with Luffaria (that is. Dr. Veronge's 

 West-Indian sponge above quoted), but with his (Schmidt's) 

 Cacospongia^ which has a totally different fibre, the cavity of 

 which, instead of being simple, is charged more or less with 

 foreign objects, i. e. grains of sand and fragments of spicules. 



