906 DR. BOWERBANK ON HYALONEMA LTJSITANICUM. [NoV. 28, 



24th, dismisses the consideration of my paper on " Hyalonema mi- 

 rabilis," read on the 10th of January, in not the most courteous 

 style imaginable. In a short note to his paper (p. 120) he observes, 

 " Dr. Bowerbank has written a long and diffuse paper to attempt to 

 prove his position, when a cut in the polype-cell would have settled 

 the question. It is a pity he did not recollect King Charles's ques- 

 tion about the fish and the water." This style of pooh-poohing 

 disputed facts in natural history is neither just nor gentlemanly, and 

 in the present case it is at variance with the truth. Dr. Gray was 

 invited by me to be present at the reading of the paper on the 10th 

 of January, but he dechned to appear on that occasion. Had he 

 been there he would have known that I had, not once only, but re- 

 peatedly, cut into his supposed polype-cells, and that the results of 

 their examinations were duly described and their anatomical pecu- 

 harities figured in illustration of the descriptions of them. Neither 

 then, nor since, has Dr. Gray attempted to disprove a single fact 

 advanced by me in that paper. 



In conclusion I may observe that, since the reading of a short 

 supplemental paper on March 28th, entitled "Additional Observa- 

 tions on Hyalonema mirabile," I have been fortunate in obtaining 

 from Mr. Jonathan Couch, of Polperro, several dried specimens of 

 Zoanthus couchii, in which the polypes were living when dredged up 

 at Shetland, and in which the motive fibres passing from the polypes 

 have their distal extremities attached in a circle to the inner surface 

 of the polype-case of the animal. The terminal portions of these 

 fibres have a stout, dilated-cyhndrical, and very fleshy appearance. 

 They are attached to the inner surface of the mouth of the polypi- 

 dom' by their apices only ; and from these points they pass inward 

 to the upper part of the polype to which their bases are attached, 

 and down the sides of which each of them may be traced for a con- 

 siderable distance, gradually diminishing in diameter as they pass 

 downward on the body of the animal. 



As the end to be attained by means of these organs, in both 

 Zoanthus and Hyalonema, is precisely the same, that of opening 

 and closing a purse-like orifice on the apex of a cylindrical tube. 

 Nature, as might have been expected, has adopted nearly the same 

 mode of action in either case — that of a series of motive fibres, the 

 distal ends of which are attached in a circle around the orifice to be 

 contracted ; and there is just that difference in their structure and 

 mode of disposition that is appropriate to the conditions of each 

 separate animal. 



In Hyalonema, destitute of polypes, they are imbedded between 

 the outer and inner tissues of the corium of the organ on which they 

 are destined to operate ; while in Zoanthus they are not immersed 

 in the tissues of the case or polypidom of the animal, but are parts 

 of the enclosed polype within it, and their distal ends only are at- 

 tached to the oral opening of the external case, while the remaining 

 portions of these organs are attached to the outer integument of the 

 retractile polype within the polypidom. 



These organs in Zoanthus are few in number, and very much 



