EUPLECTELLA. 
243 
observes : “ It appears in the first described species that the 
fine silky filaments into which the parietal fibres were resolved 
at the small end of the cylindroid have been torn or detached 
by violence from some other body. The subject of the present 
description has been fortunately preserved along with the foreign 
body to which it was attached, by the terminal filament ; such 
mode of attachment may now be therefore added to the generic 
character of Eujplectella as above defined. Further, he calls 
the end of the tube next the lid the last or lowest of the 
transverse fibres,” adding in a footnote, “ on the supposition 
that the Eujplectella hangs dependent from its filamentous 
attachment.” 
So that he evidently seems to think that the position in which 
he figured it on the plate in the Linnean Transactions , with 
the widest end of the tube (or base as he called it, downwards) is 
the natural position of the sponge in the sea, but he has never- 
theless figured it in the reversed position, in the second figure, 
in the Transactions of the Zoological Society , that is to say, 
with the root-like base downwards, and the wider part of the 
tube above. Dr. Bowerbank thinks that “some of them are 
apparently of a parasitic habit,” but the specimens lately re- 
ceived do not justify such a theory. They all seem to have 
lived attached to mud. 
M. De Blainville, in his very useful Manuel d' Actinologie, 
described a small tubular specimen with short blunt branches 
like a stunted shrub, Alcyoncellum gelatinosum , which had 
been discovered and brought home by M.M. Quoy and Graimard 
during their voyage, a calcareous sponge which they seem to 
have forgotten, for no account or figure of it occurs in their work. 
They quote De Blainville’s character of the genus literatim, 
and apply it to their Corbeil de Venus, to which it has not the 
slightest alliance, the one being a calcareous sponge, formed of 
a multitude of minute three-rayed spicules, and the other, a 
beautiful cornucopia, formed of woven fascicules of hard, brittle, 
glass-like fibres, so hard that they will scratch glass. 
They could never have compared the generic character 
which they extra, cted with their specimens, for the description, 
which is as follows, is very characteristic. 
“ Corps phytoide subpierreux solidifie par des spicules tricus- 
jpides a branches peu nombreuses, cylindrique fistulaire, termine 
par un orifice arrondi a parois epaisses, compose de granules 
reguliers polygones alveoliformes perces d’un pore a l’exterieur 
et a l’interieur.” Blainv. p. 302. 
M. Miln e-Edwards in his edition of Lamarck, Animaux sans 
Vertebres, placed at the end of the sponges an account of MM. 
Quoy and Giaimard’s Corbeil de Venus, and perhaps seeing that 
the character that they gave in their work did not fit the 
