MEMOIRS. 
Monograph of Moneka. By Ernst Hackel. 
{Concluded from page 232.) 
While on the one hand the kingdom of the Protista is 
increased by the Labyrinthulea with a separate class, on 
the other hand it may now be satisfactorily proved that 
another group of Protista should be removed from this king- 
dom, and referred to the animal kingdom as decided animals. 
These are the Sponges, of whose animal nature veiy decided 
morphological indications have been very recently discovered. 
As long ago as 1854, Leuckart, the illustrious founder of 
the sub-kingdom Ccelenterata, in his yearly report upon the 
progress of zoology (in the ‘ Archiv fur N aturgeschichte’) , 
united the sponges or Poriphera with the Coelenterata, by a 
comparison of the canal system of the sponges with the 
ccelenteric gastrovascular apparatus of the true Ccelenterata. 
Last winter, my pupil and assistant, Herr Miklucho- 
Maclay, of St. Petersburg, during our stay at the Canary 
island Lanzarote, examined carefully the exceedingly rich 
sponge-fauna of these coasts, and, as I have convinced myself 
by ocular inspection, thereby discovered new forms of sponges 
whose anatomy furnishes far stronger proofs of the near rela- 
tionship of the sponges with the Ccelenterata than we hitherto 
possessed. For instance, Herr Miklucho has discovered a 
calcareous sponge (Gaancha blanca ) nearly allied to Sycon 
and Ute, but whose entire interior system consists of a simple 
cylindrical stomach, a digestive cavity, as in the simplest 
Hydroida. The so-called oscula (Carnini) of the sponges 
are not only excretory openings, as they have hitherto been 
considered, but also serve for the reception of water and food. 
These external openings are at once mouth and anus. In a 
word, the oscula are the stomachic cavities of the Coelen- 
terata, analogous to those of the polypi, and in all probability 
homologous with them at the same time. The canals pro- 
ceeding from the oscula correspond with the canals which 
ramify in the parenchyma of many Autliozoa. But what 
VOL. IX. — NEW SER. Y 
