On the "Glass-Rope" Hyalonema.. So 



as most of the points upon which Dr. Gray relies for the defence 

 of his opinion are more or less fully discussed in these pages. 



One consideration militated strongly against the hypothesis 

 of Gray and Brandt. No known coelenterate zoophyte had a 

 purely silicious axis ; and such an axis, made up of loose separate 

 spicules, seemed strangely inconsistent with the harmony of 

 the class. Silicious spicules of all forms and sizes, were con- 

 ceivable in sponges; and in 1857, Milne Edwards, on the 

 authority of Valenciennes, who was thoroughly versed in the 

 structure of the Gorgonice, combined the sponge and the sili- 

 cious rope into a single organism, and degraded the zoophyte 

 to the rank of an incrusting parasite. 



Anything very strange coming from Japan, is to be re- 

 garded with considerable distrust. The Japanese are wonder- 

 fully ingenious, and one favourite aim of their misdirected 

 industry, is the fabrication of all kinds of impossible monsters, 

 by the curious combination of parts of different animals. 

 It was therefore quite conceivable that the whole thing 

 was an imposition; that some beautiful spicules separated 

 from some unknown organism, had been twisted into a whisp 

 by the Japanese, and then manipulated so as to have their 

 fibres naturally bound together by the sponges and zoophytes, 

 which are, doubtless, rapidly developed in the Mongolian rock- 

 pools. Ehrenberg, when he examined Hyalonema, took this 

 view. He at once recognized the silicious threads as the spicules 

 of a sponge, quite independent of the zoophyte with which 

 they were encrusted ; but he suggested that they might have 

 been artificially combined into the spiral coil, and placed under 

 artificial circumstances favourable to the growth of a sponge 

 of a different species round their base. 



The condition in which many specimens reach Europe is 

 certainly calculated to throw some doubt on their genuineness. 

 It seems that the bundles of spicules, made up in various ways, 

 are largely sold as ornaments, in China and Japan. The 

 coils of spicules are often stuck upright, with their lower 

 ends in circular holes in stones. Mr. Huxley exhibited lately 

 to the Linnaean Society a beautiful specimen of this kind, now 

 in the British Museum — a stone has been bored, probably by a 

 colony of boring Mollusks, and a whole family of Hyalonemas, 

 old and young, are apparently growing out of the burrows ; the 

 larger individuals more than a foot in length, and the young 

 ones down to an inch or so, like tiny camel's hair pencils. 

 All these are incrusted by the usual zoophyte, which also ex- 

 tends here and there over the stone (glued on probably) ; 

 but there is no trace of the sponge. Such an association, as we 

 shall see hereafter, is undoubtedly artificial. 



Professor Max Schultze, examined with great care several 



