and on parallel lines. Here we find quadrangles defined by huge, unhewn stones, worn and frayed by time, and having every evidence of highest antiquity, by the side of other squares of similar plan, but defined by massive stones cut with much elaboration, as if they were the work of later generations, better acquainted with the use of tools fit for cutting stones, who nevertheless retained the notions of their ancestors, bringing only greater skill to the construction of their monuments. The megalithic remains of Tiahuanaco rank second in interest to none in the world.

Fig. 9 is of a singular monument, in the ancient town of Chicuito, once the most important in the Collao. It is in the form of a rectangle, sixty-five feet on each side, and consists of a series of large, roughly worked blocks of stone, placed closely side by side on a platform, or rather on a foundation of stones, sunk in the ground, and projecting fourteen inches outward all around. The entrance is from the east, between two blocks of stones, higher than the rest. This may be taken as a type of an advanced class of megalithic monuments by no means uncommon in the highlands of Peru. The features I seek to illustrate would be made. more apparent by a greater number of views, plans, and sections than I am now able to present, as may be inferred from the few accompanying this paper. When they shall come to be fully illustrated, I think all students will coincide with me in my already matured opinion that there exist in Peru and Bolivia, high up among the snowy Andes, the oldest forms of monuments, sepulchral and otherwise, known to mankind, exact counterparts in character of those of the "old world," having a common design, illustrating similar conceptions, and all of them the work of the same peoples found in occupation of the country at the time of the Conquest, and whose later monuments are mainly if not wholly the developed forms of those raised by their ancestors, and which seem to have been the spontaneous productions of the primitive man in all parts of the world, and not necessarily nor even probably derivative.

I have only to add one word in respect to caverns. There are many of these in the sierras of Peru, in which the modern traveller is often glad to find refuge, as was the Indian voyager before him. But few of these however, seem to have been inhabited. Generally they appear to have been used as burial places, and abound in desiccated human bodies, human bones, objects of human art, and the bones of indigenous animals, often cemented together with calcareous deposits. Some of the many Peruvian traditions affirm that the ancient inhabitants of the country emerged from the limestone caverns in the frontier Amazonian valley of Paucartambo. The best accepted perhaps of the Peruvian traditions assigns to the Sun-born Manco Capac, his birth-place and early residence in a shallow cavern on the island of Titicaca, out of which the sun rose to illuminate the earth, and which was regarded as the most sacred spot in the Inca Empire. That man should first seek shelter in caverns, in a cold and arid region like the plateau of Peru, where wood is scarce or unknown, is equally natural and probable; but the evidences of such a practice do not exist, or rather have not yet been discovered.

That considerable aboriginal Peruvian tribes once lived in houses built on piles, or on floats, in the shallow waters of the Andean lakes, is not only probable but certain. The remnants of such a tribe, bearing the name of Antis, still live in this manner in the reedy lakes formed by the spreading out or overflow of the Rio Desaguadero, the outlet of Lake Titicaca. These people spoke and still speak a lan

*The old Jesuit, Arriaga, in his rare and valuable work Extirpacion de la Idolatria del Peru (1621), tells us not only that the inhabitants of the coast of Peru reverenced the Huaris, "who were their ancestors and also giants, but the buildings erected by them." He adds: "They reverence also their Pocarinas, or places of ancient residence, to the degree of preferring to live in them, notwithstanding that they are built in lofty, rocky, arid places, often a league from water, and only possibly to be reached, and even then with difficulty, on foot."

The word Pacarina, as given by Arriaga, is embodied in that of Paucartambo, the name of one of the upper Amazonian Valleys, running parallel to that of Yucay, near Cuzco, whence, one of the traditions of the Incas derives the founders of their civilization and empire. The name is only a corruption of Pacari, to be born; and tampu, a dwelling or stopping place- the whole being equivalent to birth-place or homestead.

guage differing equally from the Aymara and Quichua, called Puquina, and the early chroniclers speak of them as extremely savage, so much so that when asked who they were, they answered, they were not men but Uros, as if they did not belong to the human family. Whole towns of them, it is said, lived on floats of totora or reeds, which they moved from place to place according to their convenience or necessities.

REMARKS ON SOME CURIOUS SPONGES.

BY PROFESSOR JOSEPH LEIDY.

AMONG the many remarkable marine productions which puzzle the naturalist as to their relationship in the animal kingdom, is the Hyalonema mirabilis of the Japan seas. First described and named by Dr. John E. Gray, of the British Museum, this distinguished zoologist viewed it as a coral related with Gorgonia, or the Sea Fan.

The specimens of Hyalonema, as ordinarily preserved, appear as a loosely twisted bundle of threads converging to a point at one extremity of the fascicle and more or less divergent at the other. The threads bear so much resemblance to spun glass that the production has received the name of the Glass Plant. They are mainly composed of silex and are translucent, shining, and highly flexible. The fascicle is upwards of a foot and a half in length and near half an inch thick. The threads range from the thickness of an ordinary bristle to that of a stout darning needle.

Specimens of the Hyalonema fascicle, as they have been brought to us, almost invariably present some portion invested with a brown warty crust; the wart-like elevations terminating in a cylindrical ring with radiating ridges. These elevations are the individual polyps, continuous through the

AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV.

intervening crust, of which Dr. Gray views the fascicle as the central axis.

In some specimens of the Hyalonema fascicle the narrow end is enveloped in a spongy mass, or as Dr. Gray observes, "a species of sponge." He supposes the sponge to be independent of the fascicle or "coral," though necessary to it as a means of attachment in its habitation. According to this view the fascicle with its warty crust, is a parasite of the sponge into which the fascicle is inserted. Dr. Gray remarks that "in general the specimens are withdrawn from the spongy base and the lower part of the axis is cleaned; but it is evident that they all are attached to such a sponge in their natural state."

When the writer first had an opportunity of seeing a specimen of Hyalonema, consisting of a fascicle partially invested with a warty crust, presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1860, and before he had seen an account of the remarkable production, his impression was that it was a silicious fascicle of a sponge, upon which a parasitic polyp had found a convenient and secure restingplace. M. Valenciennes had previously expressed a similar opinion, as observed in the introduction to Professor Milne Edwards' work on British Fossil Corals.

Notwithstanding the frequency of silicious threads entering into the composition of many sponges, Dr. Gray remarks, in referring the Hyalonema fascicle to a coral, that this is peculiar "as being the only body the animal nature of which is undoubted that is yet known to secrete silica; the spicules and axis of all the corals which had fallen under his observation being purely calcareous."

Professor Brandt of St. Petersburg views the fascicle and its warty crust as parts of a polyp, and the sponge mass as a parasite which attaches itself to the polyp, gradually penetrating its silicious axis, and finally killing it.

Dr. Bowerbank who has so extensively investigated the sponges in general, regards all three of the elements of the