JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



APEIL 1881. 



TEANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



II. — On a Badiolarian and some Microspongida from consider- 

 able depths in the Atlantic Ocean. By Professor P. Martin 

 Duncan, M.B. (Lond.), F.E.S., &c., Vice-Pres. E.M.S. 



{Read 12th January, 1881.) 

 Plate IU. 



In cleaning some specimens of recent corals, which had been 

 dredged up during the expedition of H.M.S. ' Porcupine/ and others 

 which had been given to me by the late Count de Pourtales, from 

 the Caribbean Sea, I found a great number of minute sponge-like 

 bodies. Some few were entangled in the consolidated ooze with 

 which the cups of some dead corals were filled, and the rest were 

 fixed to different parts of all kinds of living and dead corals, many 

 being parasitic within. 



The corals had been subjected to a rough washing before they 

 came to me, or had had to submit to one during their passage 

 upwards in the dredge through many hundreds of fathoms of sea- 

 water ; but they had not been placed in spirit, and they had dried. 

 On removing a few of the specimens of the minute bodies from the 

 ooze of the cups, a matter of great difficulty, some were broken ; 

 but three were disentangled without much injury. They were so 

 small that it was desirable not to place them under the action of 

 cleaning media, but to transfer them at once to Canada balsam in a 

 cell. 



On examining these little bodies, I was struck, not only with 

 their great beauty, but also with the Eadiolarian appearance of two 

 of them. The third was indubitably a true hexactinellid sponge of 

 the Lyssakine division. 



The position in classification of one of the specimens with a 

 continuous siliceous skeleton, would appear to be in the family 



Ser. 2.— Vol. I. O 



