July 30, 1874] 



NATURE 



251 



duties is slight. A collection once put in order is easily 

 so retained. Even the cataloguing of it is a task that 

 may not be expected to occupy an ornithologist of Mr. 

 Salvin's ability, knowledge, and experience, a very long 

 time — though catalogues in these days, to be worth any- 

 thing, are more serious affairs than most people would 

 fancy. The regulations of the office prescribe that its 

 incumbent should then turn his attention to the other 

 ornithological collections possessed by the University ; 

 and, even if the rest be trifling, the Swainson Collection 

 may be expected to form a formidable undertaking — to 

 say nothing of others that may be acquired from time to 

 time. We take it for granted that the University will 

 not allow such catalogues to remain in manuscript, but 

 will print and publish them as they are completed. If so, 

 it will be promoting the advancement of science in this 

 particular direction in the most efficacious mode possible, 

 and yet, be it remembered, not in a way that by any means 

 can be termed " educational." The compilation of these 

 catalogues will be purely a matter of research, and the 

 amount of aid they will furnish to scientific ornithologists 

 cannot be calculated. There can be little doubt that to 

 the centre in which such good work is being done, many 

 other collections will gravitate, and thus Cambridge will 

 be for many years to come a recipient and disseminating 

 focus of Ornithology. 



Now, even the most ardent ornithologist will hardly 

 maintain that his favourite study is the most important in 

 the wide round of the sciences, or even of those which 

 have to do with biology. The moral of the " Strickland 

 Cur.atorship " is, that similar appointments ought to be 

 established to do for other sciences what that will do for 

 Ornithology. And even now we have to mention a curious 

 fact which should be an encouragement for future foundei s 

 or foundresses to cast their bread upon the waters ; two 

 other benefits to this branch of science have unexpectedly 

 been the result of Miss Strickland's endowment. The 

 naturalist first selected by her for the new appoint- 

 ment was the learned IJr. Finsch, who, until the 

 last few months, had been pursuing his unwearied 

 labours on a scanty and uncertain pittance at Bremen. 

 When the good people of that city learned that they were 

 likely to lose his services, they bethought them that it was 

 expedient to retain him, and to do this they resolved 

 upon raising his stipend and making his office in their 

 museum permanent. In like manner it happened that 

 Miss Strickland's next selection, a young naturalist of 

 great promise, was induced to stay at Berlin by the crea- 

 tion of a post in the museum there specially for him. 

 Thus the benefactress of Cambridge has the satisfaction 

 of knowing that her bounty has been the means of pro- 

 viding for two meritorious men, besides accomplishing the 

 object she had directly in view. Will no one come for- 

 ward to further the good work she has so well begun ? 

 Now that there is a rumour that one of our greatest living 

 natur.alists is likely to be tempted by a glittering bait to 

 the other side of the Atlantic, it is in the power of many 

 a one to preserve the glory of his services to England by 

 founding a Professorship of Biological Research in the 

 University of John Ray and Charles Darwin ! 



A NEW ORDER OF HVDROZOA 



ON the southern shores of France, at a slight depth 

 below the surface of the sea, there may be found 

 attached to stones small patches of one of the horny 

 sponges which will probably arrest the attention of the 

 zoologist by what will appear to him as an unusually 

 obvious and well-defined condition of their efferent orifices 

 or oscula. 



If one of these patches be transferred to a phial of 

 sea-water, the observer will soon be astonished by seeing 

 that from every one of the apparent oscula a beautiful 



plume of hydroid tentacles will have become developed, 

 and he will naturally believe that the form has at last 

 been found which will remove all doubt as to the zoolo- 

 gical position of the sponges, and decide in favour of the 

 hydroid affinities recently assigned to them.* 



A more careful examination, however, will show that 

 the orifices on the surface have been incorrectly regarded 

 as oscula, and that the tentacles form no part of the 

 sponge, but proceed from an entirely different organism 

 which is imbedded in its substance. 



It will be further seen that the organism with which 

 the sponge is thus associated is contained in a congeries 

 of chitinous tubes which permeate the sponge-tissue, and 

 open on its surface in the manner of genuine oscula, and 

 it will be still further apparent that this organism, while 

 undoubtedly a hydrozoon, and even presenting quite the 

 aspect of a hydroid trophosome, is no hydroid at all, 

 and carrtiot indeed be referred to any of the hitherto 

 recognised orders of the Hydrozoa, but must take its 

 place in an entirely new and as yet undefined order of 

 this class. 



The chitinous tubes and their contents are united by a 

 common tubular plexus which lies towards the base of the 

 sponge, and they thus constitute a composite colony of 

 zooids. The tubes, towards their free extremities, where 

 they open on the surface of the sponge, become much in- 

 creased in width, and here their contents become deve- 

 loped into a very remarkable body, which has the power 

 of extending itself beyond the orifice of the tube, and of 

 again withdrawing itself far into the interior exactly like 

 the hydranth or polypite of a campanularian hydroid in 

 its hydrotheca. When extended, it displays from around 

 the margin of a wide terminal orifice its beautiful crown 

 of tentacles ; but when withdrawn into the interior of 

 the cup-like receptacle, the tentacles are greatly con- 

 tracted and thrown back into the cavity of its body. Its 

 general appearance, indeed, is very like that of a cam- 

 panularian hydranth, and a careful examination is needed 

 in order to show that it possesses all the essential charac- 

 ters, not of a hydranth, but of a medusa. It has a circu- 

 lar canal surrounding the terminal orifice and supporting 

 the tentacular crown, and it has four symmetrically-dis- 

 posed longitudinal canals extending from the circular 

 canal backwards in the walls of the body. No manu- 

 brium could be detected, though this was carefully sought 

 for at the point where it might be expected to be found, 

 namely, where the medusiform zooid passes into the 

 common cccnosarc which occupies the narrower portion 

 of the tube ; neither was there any appearance of a 

 velum, nor of lithocysts or ocelli ; but these are compara- 

 tively unessential modifications. 



The reproductive system is probably developed in the 

 walls of the longitudinal canals, but in none of the speci- 

 mens examined was this part of the organisation suffi- 

 ciently mature to admit of a satisfactory demonstration. 



For the little animal thus constructed I propose the 

 name of Steplianoscyphiis niirabilis. Whether it is to be 

 regarded as parasitically connected with the sponge, or 

 whether the two are only accidentally associated, it is at 

 present impossible to say. At all events, in no instance 

 did I find the Stephanoscyphus unaccompanied by the 

 sponge. 



Stephanoscyphus may then be regarded as a compound 

 hydrozoon, whose zooids are included in cup-like recep- 

 tacles resembhng the hydrotheca- of the calyptoblastic 

 hydroids ; but these zooids, instead of being constructed 

 like the hydranths of a hydroid, are formed on the plan of 

 a medusa. It has plainly very decided affinities with the 

 Hydroida, but is nevertheless removed from these by a 

 distance at least as great as that which separates from 

 them the Siphonophora. It thus becomes the type of a 

 new hydrozoal order, for which I propose the name of 

 Thecomedus^. Geo. J. Allman 



• See Haeckel's " Kalk.chwa-nne." 



