Abstract
MR. H. J. CARTER is devoting much attention at the present moment to the study of the Protozoa. In March last he published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History the results of his investigations on Coccoliths and Coccospheres, stating his opinion that these minute bodies are of vegetable and not animal organisation, as hitherto supposed. Should his supposition prove correct, it will materially modify the theory of the mode of support of animal life at great depths, advocated by many recent deep-sea explorers. In the pages of the same journal for this month (July), Mr. Carter lays before us the results of his more recent researches into the ultimate structure of the marine calcareous sponges, and which entirely harmonise with those already arrived at by Prof. James Clark, of Boston, U.S. The sum total of these are that the Spongiadæ, as a group, are most closely allied to the Flagellate Infusioria; the animal portions of the genera Leuconia, Grantia, and Clathrina among the calcareous sponge-forms, and Spongilla, Isodictya, Hymeniacidon, and Cliona among the silicious representatives examined by Mr. Carter, being found by him to consist, for the most part, of aggregations of the same peculiar funnel-bearing ciliated cells characteristic of the new Flagellate Infusorial genera Codosiga, Salpingæca, Bicosæca, &c, introduced by Prof. Clark. The only point at issue between these two explorers in the same field is, whether each separate cell possesses a distinct mouth, or is capable of engulphing food, after the manner of an ordinary Rhizopod, through any portion of its body. Mr. Carter here adopts the latter view.
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KENT, W. Affinities of the Sponges . Nature 4, 184 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004184a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004184a0