Rev. A. M. Norman on the Genus Haliphysema. 269 
ence to Mr. Carter’s investigations. Even granted, for the sake 
of argument, that he has made out a strong case for the Fora- 
miniferal, or, at any rate, Rhizopodal character of the animals 
constituting Bowerbank’s genus Haliphysema, it appears to 
me that they have not the remotest claim to be included in 
Schultze’s genus Squamulina. But on what principle has 
Mr. Carter changed the specific name and substituted scopula 
for the prior appellation given by Bowerbank, Tumanowiczit? 
There can be no justification for such a step. No one could 
possibly mistake the animal which was first described and 
figured ; and the supposition that Dr. Bowerbank had as- 
signed the dead tests of an obscure organism, which he had 
not observed in a living state, to a wrong class, is no justifi- 
able reason for rejecting the specific name he gave. If errors 
in first description invalidated the names then assigned, where 
should we stop in changes of nomenclature? Confining criti- 
cism to the Protozoa, and not even there condescending to 
notice mistakes as regards single species or even genera, are 
all the Foraminifera to be renamed which were originally 
described as Mollusca? or the sponges which were regarded as 
plants? If Mr. Carter’s mode of proceeding as_ regards 
Haliphysema Tumanowiczti is right, such wholesale altera- 
tions in nomenclature as I have hinted at would, on the same 
grounds, be allowable. 
I was unable to regard the arguments which Mr. Carter 
adduced in favour of the Rhizopodal nature of these organ- 
isms as conclusive at the time when they were first published. 
The partitioned character of the base might perhaps be nothing 
more than a means of additional hold upon the body to which 
the test is attached, and of giving strength to the dome which 
supports the column. It is of importance, moreover, as bear- 
ing upon one of the arguments of Mr. Carter in favour of the 
foraminiferal nature of Haliphysema, to observe :—first, that 
he entirely failed to discover pseudopodial processes naturally 
extruded* ; and, secondly, that though, on being cut in two, 
the injured parts did elongate themselves after the manner of 
pseudopodia, yet we have evidence that pseudopodial move- 
ments are quite consistent with sponge-structure. Haeckel, 
in speaking of what he calls the ectoderm, or animal germ- 
lamella of the young calcisponge, says that if torn mechani- 
* Mr. Kent, in the ‘Annals,’ 1878, i. p. 14, speaks of Mr. Carter as 
“witnessing the protrusion of pseudopodia from the terminal oryfice of 
the types in question.” Iam not aware that Mr. Carter has anywhere 
stated that he has witnessed such a protrusion ; he only witnessed the 
extension of pseudopodium-like processes from the exuding syncytium 
which escaped from the pedicel of HZ. ramulosum when cut in two with a 
pair of scissors. 
