134 DR. J. S. BOWERBANK ON SPONGES. [Feb. 13, 



that department kept an old hat hy him in which a large number 

 of single letters cut out of old catalogues were stored, and that when 

 he wanted a name for a new genus he used to dip his hand therein 

 and take out a pinch of letters, which were scattered before him, and 

 out of which, by a few judicious changes of arrangement, he formed 

 the required name. From the nature of a number of the names of 

 the new genera proposed by Dr. Gray in his arrangement of the 

 sponges, it would appear highly probable that he has found the old 

 hat and its contents in some one of the out-of-the-way corners in his 

 department, and again applied it to its original use. 



There are certain animadversions in the author's paper on my 

 own course of proceeding in treating on the sponges both British and 

 foreign, to which I must beg leave to say a few words in reply. 



Dr. Gray complains (p. 496) of my not having referred to any 

 of the exotic sponges described by him in the ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society,' and of my not having described the sponges in 

 the British Museum. I have carefully gone over all the British 

 species in that collection, and have referred to them, when necessary, 

 in my ' Monograph of British Sponges' (as, for instance, vol. ii. 

 pp. 275, 277, 279, 281, 364, and elsewhere), and I should have de- 

 scribed the sponges which Dr. Gray has written upon with pleasure 

 had he requested me to do so. But all these specimens were described 

 and named by him first and shown to me afterwards, and when I 

 found he was thus skimming the cream of the subject I determined 

 not to accept the leavings. I will not now point out the numerous 

 errors regarding these species into which Dr. Gray has fallen, as it 

 is very probable that I shall have to recur to their descriptions at a 

 future period. 



Dr. Gray (p. 500) objects to the large number of species of 

 British Sponges in my genera Halicliondna, Ilijviedesniia, and Iso- 

 dictya. Had I applied Halichondria as Dr. Johnston and previous 

 writers had established it, instead of having 28 species of that 

 genus in my ' Monograph of the British Spongiadaj' there would have 

 been 169 sj)ecies. The number thus designated in Dr. Johnston's 

 'History of British Sponges' is 3/. The Doctor's objection to the 

 large number of species in the genera he names is plausible ; but it 

 is Nature and not I that am answerable for this difficulty ; but in 

 stating this objection he does not mention that the species of each 

 of these genera are subdivided, by means of the various forms of the 

 primary skeleton-spicula, into four or five divisions each, and that the 

 greatest number of species in one group is 28 in the genus Isodicfya. 

 The author even extends his objection to my genus Dicfyocylindrus, 

 in which there are 1 1 species, and these subdivided into 4 groups, 

 the largest of which contains 5 species. The learned author quite 

 forgets that the same inevitable difficulty occurs in botany. In the 

 fourth edition of Babington's ' Manual of British Botany,' we find 

 there are 1 9 species of Roses, 32 of Salix, 33 of Hieracium, 4 1 of 

 Rubus, and 72 of Carex. In all these cases the difficulty is very 

 much lessened by judicious subdivisions of the respective genera. 

 The author also objects to my terminology ; but without a definite 



