20 REMARKS ON SOME CURIOUS SPONGES. 
the bottom of the fascicle, and its flattened extremity with 
the large oscules at the base. This appears to be the general 
view, but it has oceurred to me that the sponge mass in its 
natural position was uppermost, and was moored by its 
glassy cable, or rope of sand, to the sea bottom, perhaps to 
marine alge. This opinion is founded on the circumstance 
that in sponges generally the large oscules from which flow 
the currents of effete water are uppermost. The ends of the 
threads of the fascicle, with their reversed hooklets, are also 
well adapted to adhere to objects. 
The equally wonderful and still more beautiful Huplectella 
of the Philippines was also at first represented upside down, 
as seen in the figure of Professor Owen in the “Zoological 
Transactions of. London," the reverse of the position now 
assigned to it as represented in figure 76 of the third volume 
of the NATURALIST. In the same manner Euplectella and 
Hyalonema appear to me to be alike constructed so as to be 
anchored in position by the silicious threads, with their re- 
versed hooklets. It may be that Hyalonema, in its home, 
is suspended by means of its glossy cable, but I think it 
highly improbable that it should either sit or be attached by 
the base of the sponge mass in which the large oscules are 
placed. 
In the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 
for 1867, Dr. Gray observes that, according to Dr. William 
Lockart, "the Japanese Hyalonema is found growing on the 
rocks of the island of Enosima not far from Yokohama. 
The fishermen offer the sponges with their silicious fibres for 
sale to visitors at the temples of Enosima." 
An entirely different sponge, apparently intermediate in 
character with Hyalonema and Euplectella, recently de- 
seribed in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sci- 
ences of Philadelphia, under the name of Pheronema, would 
appear to throw some light upon the question of what be- 
longs to Hyalonema. The specimen, obtained from the 
island of Santa Cruz, W. I., is preserved in the Museum of 
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