4 
rine productions with which his researches in the Philippine Islands 
have enabled him toenrich the zoological collections of his native coun- 
try. This production is, however, a member of the very lowest class of 
the animal kingdom, if even it be permitted to rank in that division 
of organized nature. After repeated examination and much reflec- 
tion, I can arrive at no other conclusion than that the object about 
to be described is the skeleton or framework of a species of sponge 
helonging to that division of the class called Horny, in opposition to 
the calcareous and siliceous groups, and to the Alcyonoid family. It is 
a hollow, cylindrical, slightly conical, and gently curved case or tube, 
resembling a delicate cornucopia, with the apex removed. It 
measures eight inches in length, two inches across the base, and one 
inch and a quarter across the apex, which is truncated. The base 
or wider aperture of the tube is sub-elliptical, and is closed by a cap 
of coarse and somewhat irregular network, gently convex externally, 
the circumference of which is divided from the walls of the cylinder 
by a thin projecting plate, standing out like a ruff or frill. This 
marginal plate varies in breadth from one to three lines. The pa- 
rietes of the circular cone consist also of a network of coarse fibres, 
but these exhibit the greatest regularity of disposition, and intersect 
each other at definite and nearly equal distances throughout the 
course of the cone. They consist of longitudinal, transverse, and 
oblique fibres, the latter being of two kinds, winding spirally round 
the cylinder, but in opposite directions. The strongest fibres are 
the longitudinal and transverse ones, which are arranged at intervals 
of about a line and a half, and mark out regular square spaces 
of the same diameter: these spaces are kept of pretty equal size 
throughout the cone, from the circumstance of the longitudinal fibres 
diminishing in number as the cone decreases in size; the mode of 
diminution is not, however, by abrupt termination, but by the gra- 
dual convergence and final interblending of two contiguous longitu- 
dinal fibres, and the regularity of the interspaces is therefore disturbed 
at the intervals of such converging fibres. The fibre resulting from 
this union of two fibres bears a proportionate thickness to the addi- 
tional material entering into its composition. The nature of such 
material is demonstrated at the apex of the cone by the resolution 
of the longitudinal fibres into their component filaments, each of 
them dividing at about two thirds of an inch from their extremity 
into a fasciculus or pencil of extremely delicate, stiff, glistening, 
elastic threads, resembling the finest hairs of spun glass. The trans- 
verse fibres, in like manner, are resolved at the truncated apex of 
the cone into their component filaments, which intersect those pro- 
ceeding from the longitudinal fibres, as well as similar pencils from 
the oblique filaments, the whole forming an irregular silky tuft, which 
almost closes the apical aperture of the cone. 
“The longitudinal fibres are external to the transverse ones, to 
which they are connected by both the spiral fibres, and by smaller and 
less regular intersecting fibres at the angles of the squares ; the area of 
each square is thus reduced more or less to a circular form: at about 
one or two inches from the apex, these connecting reticulate fibres 
begin to rise in the form of narrow ridges from the general surface 
