Origin of the Ainos. 19 



thus in time have reached America at a very early period. 

 The difficulties to be met were hardly greater than those 

 they must have encountered in passing to and from many 

 of the islands of Japan. We are thus seriously led to ask, 

 if some of the resemblance between the Ainos and Esqui- 

 maux are not indications of affinity rather than mere coin- 

 cidences ? 



There thus appear possibilities of an Asiatic influence 

 upon our earliest settlers, which may have been more than 

 passing ; but the field for speculation in this direction en- 

 larges so rapidly, that we must await the accumulation 

 of facts, which are now wanting, before correct judgment 

 can be given. 



New Fresh-Water Sponges from Nova Scotia 

 and Newfoundland. 



By A. H. MacKay. 



In the article on Organic Siliceous Eemains found in the 

 Lake Deposits of Nova Scotia, published in the last num- 

 ber of the Eecord of Science, Nos. 3 and 8 of the list of 

 sponges were referred to as new. I here quote the original 

 descriptions of the species, to which I append some obser- 

 vations. In the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 

 of London, January, 1885, Mr. H. J. Carter, F.E.S., of 

 England, describes a species from a lake in Pictou County, 

 Nova Scotia, as follows : — 



" Spongilla machayi, n. sp. — Sessile, spreading, charged 

 with little subglobular bodies like large statoblasts, about 

 l-12th inch. Skeletal spicule acerate, slightly curved and 

 sharp-pointed, more or less thickly spined, averaging 50 by 

 2|-6000ths inch in its greatest diameters ; [accompanied 

 abundantly by minute birotulate flesh-spicules precisely 

 like that of Meyenia everetti — that is 3 to 4-6000ths inch 

 long, with very thin smooth shaft about four times longer 

 than the diameter of the rotule, which is l-6000ths inch, 

 toothed, with the teeth recurved.] Statoblasts globular, 



