228 
riously agree perfectly with those of all other authors since 
Dujardin. 
The second point against which decided protest must, in 
limine, be made is Reichert’s representation of the “sarcode- 
bodies ” of the Hydromedusse, especially of the hy droid 
polypes. After Reichert had suffered such lamentable 
shipwreck with his investigations in the direction of the Rhi- 
zopoda, he fled to the Hydromedusoe, and tried to cause 
similar confusion here. It sounds almost incredible that 
Reichert is not even in the position to understand the sim- 
plest and longest known and most easily demonstrated struc- 
tures, such, for example, as the two epithelial forms of in- 
tegument (ectoderm and entoderm), or the development of the 
urticating capsules in the epithelial cells. But this does not 
hinder him from declaring, even on the second page of his in- 
vestigations on “Campanularise, Sertulariae, and Hydroidae,” 
that all previous knowledge of the hydroid organism was 
very erroneous, and from pronouncing the following sentence 
hy reason of his incredibly superficial examination of some 
hydroid polypes : “ Neither the correspondence in the simple 
structure of the hollow body of the organism, and perhaps 
still less the similar external habit, and a similar formation of 
the individual stems, allow the classes of animals placed by 
Leuckart among the Coelenterata to be retained in their 
present condition under such circumstances.” Reichert very 
wisely appends the following sentence : “ I must postpone 
tho attempt to define the boundaries between which the 
separation of these groups of animals is apparently to be 
effected.” 
The further course of Reichert’s Coelenterata studies can 
be predicated from this pretty beginning, and from the 
analogy of his Polythalamia studies. The ‘ Monatsbe- 
richte ’ and ‘ Abhandlungen’ of the Academy of Berlin 
will contain a series of papers, in which all previous obser- 
vers of the Coelenterata will be described as incompetent 
observers who have fallen into the grossest errors, “ whose 
fancy has been misled by wonderful microscopic illusions.” 
Then Reichert will show how everything is quite different to 
what was previously supposed, but, gradually approaching the 
representations just disputed by him by dark and hidden 
twistings and turnings, he will then finally reproduce 
them in the new form of his happy individual modes of ex- 
pression. 
As Reichert required six years for this course of com- 
prehension in the Polythalamia, he will probably need at 
least twelve years in the Coelenterata (whose true structure 
