NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 
263 
adherent granular sarcode, showing in its attenuate condition that 
granule-circulation just described. The Foraminiferal nature of the 
organism and the accuracy of Mr. Carter’s first deductions relating 
thereto, were now therefore established beyond dispute, and it has now, 
it may be anticipated, found a permanent resting-place among the 
arenaceous, and in this case adherent test-building Foraminifera 
represented by Dr. Carpenter’s family of the Lituolida. 
Mr. Kent then details the capture and digestion by the animal of 
the nauplian larva of a crustacean which still more clearly established 
its true nature, and describes the characters presented by the external 
test or skeletal portion. 
Through the artificial preservation for several weeks of living 
specimens some knowledge of their developmental history was 
obtained, and every gradational step from the naked pyriform zooid 
to the test-constructing and matured condition was observed. 
The Embryology of Sponges. — Mr. Kent, at pp. 139-156 of the same 
volume, records the results of an extended personal investigation 
of the so-called “ ciliated embryos,” or “ larvae,” or “ reproductive 
gemmules ” of sponges. Whilst Metschnikoff, Carter, Oscar Schmidt, 
F. E. Schultze, and Barrois agree with one another, and so far with 
Haeckel, in according to these bodies the existence of two or more dis- 
tinct cellular layers, carrying with it the inference that sponges are 
true tissue-forming Metazoa, Mr. Kent considers the sponges to be 
“ compound colony-building, collar-bearing flagellate monads, exhibit- 
ing neither in their embryological nor adult condition phenomena that 
do not find their parallel among the simple unicellular Protozoa,” and 
he regards “ the so-called ‘ ciliated embryos ’ as the equivalent not of a 
single body or person, but as a special aggregation of innumerable 
individuals, to which collectively the title of ‘ compound ciliated 
gemmules ’ or ‘ swarm-gemmules,’ may be most appropriately applied. 
The chain of evidence supporting this decision ” follows, as the result 
of which Mr. Kent submits that the developmental manifestations of 
the ciliated sponge embryo make it clearly evident that we have here 
“ merely a mode of increase, for a special purpose, by multiple fission 
differing in no essential manner from that common to Magosphcera, 
and the independent collar-bearing types, such as Salpingoeca, and the 
majority of the Infusoria flagellata. That these bodies cannot in any 
way be compared with the true ova of the ordinary Metazoa is de- 
monstrated not only by their inconstant form and character disas- 
sociated also with any act of spermatic fecundation, but from the fact 
that the segmentation of the primary unit gives rise to a morula-like 
aggregation which does not develop by the fusion of its constituent 
particles or blastomeres into a single gerrn-lamella or blastoderm, but 
into a number of distinct and independent unicellular zooids or units. 
The metazoic interpretation of the nature of sponges, as grounded upon 
the developmental manifestations of these same bodies, must likewise, 
as a consequence, be abandoned or otherwise be extended to the 
simple Monadina, Eadiolaria and Catallacta, which produce a similar 
morula-like segmentation-mass, thus leaving the Protozoa in posses- 
sion only of little more than an empty title. The true nature and 
