46 Gray on Sponges. 



fusci, coXis flavis. Abdominis dorso basi flavo. Venter segmentis 



posticd pallidis; penultimo et antepenultimo medio macula flava 



notatis. 



Obs. — Antennae quam in P. testaceo paululum longiores. 



P. — Fuscous-brown, thorax and breast yellow. 



Length 2 lines. 



Inhabits Peru. 



Descr. — Eyes large, globose, black ; vertex blackish ; mouth 

 somewhat ferrugineous ; palpi pale-fuscous brown ; wings paler 

 than the palpi ; feet pale-fuscous brown, their cox?e yellow ; the 

 back of the abdomen with its base yellow ; segments of the beUy 

 yellow behind ; the last but one, and the one behind it marked ia 

 their middle with a yellow spot. 

 Obs. — The antennae of this species are longer than in P. tesiaceus. 



Art. Ill, On the situation and rank of Sponges in the 

 Scale of Nature, and on their internal Structure^ hy Mr, 

 John Edward Gray. 



The true nature of these curious bodies^ has for a long while 

 been an object of great doubt to all Naturalists, for we find that 

 most of the Ancient Natural Historians apparently regarded them 

 as animals, although their allusions are very obscure, for Pliny, 

 Dioscorides, and their commentators, Maihiolus, Belonus, Bar- 

 barus, &c. &c. divided them into male and female sponges, and 

 Aristotle in his Historia Animalium v. chap. 16, observes " many 

 people were of opinion that sponges were capable of feeling, and 

 that they would shrink back if any one attempted to pluck them," 

 however he regrets this idea j but Imperati has pretended to dis- 

 tinguish two sorts of movement common to them, the one pro- 

 duced by the sponge itself, and the other dependant on the nature 

 of its substance ; but Ellis, who has quoted the above passage in 

 his Corallines, only argues on the possibility of such movement, 

 and neither there or in his Zoophites, appears to have observed it 

 himself; nor were Peron, or Bosc, who studied these substances, 

 where they were of a large size and in immense abundance, able 



