and Nomenclature of Sponges. 171 



of the late Mr. Ingall, formerly in the Bank of England, an 

 excellent microscopist and collector of sponges, fossils, &c. ; 

 CoUingsia after Mrs. Collings, of Sark, near Guernsey, who 

 has inherited from her father, Dr. Lukis, his love for natural 

 history and the desire to extend it. 



During the time this paper has been in type, Dr. Wyville 

 Thomson, in the ' Annals ' for February, p. 114, has proposed 

 another arrangement of Sponges. He modestly calls it " a 

 slight modification of Dr. Schmidt's an-angement ;" but any 

 reader, even Dr. Schmidt himself, would find it impossible to 

 detect the characters assigned to the families in the very ge- 

 neral and indistinct comparative characters assigned by Dr. 

 Schmidt himself to the groups as printed in a previous page 

 of the paper. These characters show the effect of Dr. Bower- 

 bank's researches and figures, and my explanation of them. 

 This arrangement is a step in advance ; but it would be better 

 if the step had been made from the examination of specimens 

 instead of from the study of books. 



Dr. Oscar Schmidt simply undertook to describe the Sponges 

 of a limited fauna, and only formed an arrangement of them, 

 never intending it for a general system. His work is a very 

 excellent one of its kind, just such a one as we should expect 

 from an experienced and educated naturalist on Sponges, after 

 the publication of Dr. Bowerbank's essay in the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions.' 



In consequence of Dr. Wyville Thomson adopting Dr. 

 Schmidt's arrangement, which does not contain several groups 

 of exotic Sponges, he has found it requisite to introduce what 

 he calls a new order. His order Viteea is only a new name 

 given to Dr. Bowerbank's Suborders VI. and VII. (which I had 

 called CoralUospongice) with the genus EuplecteUa added, but 

 deformed and its character rendered prolix by trying to make 

 it include Hyalonema ! as his genus Habrodictyon is only a 

 name given to my section of the family Euplectelladge con- 

 taining the genera Gorhitella and Heterotella. 



I have always considered that the characters that Dr. 0. 

 Schmidt gives to his families are the weakest part of his work. 

 He perhaps felt that the very limited number of species he 

 had examined did not justify his entering into greater detail. 

 Three of his families were well recognized groups before his 

 time ; he added Gumminese and Halisarcinae for a few very 

 fleshy Sponges. Dr. W. Thomson observes that " the horn 

 Sponges (Ceratospongige) and the Gumminese are so nearly 

 allied that they can be distinguished by comparative characters 

 only." The last group is founded on a mistake, as Dr. Bower- 



