Just as in the case of the little curved or
-shaped spicules, formed apparently within the bounds of a single cell, so also in the case of the larger tetractinellid and analogous types do we find among the Holothuroidea the same configurations reproduced as we have dealt with in the sponges. The holothurian spicules are a little less neatly formed, a little rougher, than the sponge-spicules; and certain forms occur among the former group which do not present themselves among the latter; but for the most part a community of type is obvious and striking (Fig. [216]).
A curious and, physically speaking, strictly analogous formation to the tetrahedral spicules of the sponges is found in the {452} spores of a certain little group of parasitic protozoa, the Actinomyxidia. These spores are formed from clusters of six cells, of which three come to constitute the capsule of the spore; and this capsule, always triradiate in its symmetry, is in some species drawn out into long rays, of which one constitutes a straight central axis, while the others, coming off from it at equal angles, are recurved in wide circular arcs. The account given of the development of this structure by its discoverers[461] is somewhat obscure to me, but I think that, on physical grounds, there can be no doubt whatever that the quadriradiate capsule has been somehow modelled upon a group of three surrounding cells, its axis lying between the three, and its three radial arcs occupying the furrows between adjacent pairs.
Fig. 217. Spicules of hexactinellid sponges. (After F. E. Schultze.)
The typically six-rayed siliceous spicules of the hexactinellid sponges, while they are perhaps the most regular and beautifully formed spicules to be found within the entire group, have been found very difficult to explain, and Dreyer has confessed his complete inability to account for their conformation. But, though it is doubtless only throwing the difficulty a little further back, we may so far account for them by considering that the cells or vesicles by which they are conformed are not arranged in {453} what is known as “closest packing,” but in linear series; so that in their arrangement, and by their mutual compression, we tend to get a pattern, not of hexagons, but of squares: or, looking to the solid, not of dodecahedra but of cubes or parallelopipeda. This indeed appears to be the case, not with the individual cells (in the histological sense), but with the larger units or vesicles which make up the body of the hexactinellid. And this being so, the spicules formed between the linear, or cubical series of vesicles, will have the same tendency towards a “hexactinellid” shape, corresponding to the angles and adjacent edges of a system of cubes, as in our former case they had to a triradiate or a tetractinellid form, when developed in connection with the angles and edges of a system of hexagons, or a system of dodecahedra.
Histologically, the case is illustrated by a well-known phenomenon in embryology. In the segmenting ovum, there is a tendency for the cells to be budded off in linear series; and so they often remain, in rows side by side, at least for a considerable time and during the course of several consecutive cell divisions. Such an arrangement constitutes what the embryologists call the “radial type” of segmentation[462]. But in what is described as the “spiral type” of segmentation, it is stated that, as soon as the first horizontal furrow has divided the cells into an upper and a lower layer, those of “the upper layer are shifted in respect to the lower layer, by means of a rotation about the vertical axis[463].” It is, of course, evident that the whole process is merely that which is familiar to physicists as “close packing.” It is a very simple case of what Lord Kelvin used to call “a problem in tactics.” It is a mere question of the rigidity of the system, of the freedom of movement on the part of its constituent cells, whether or at what stage this tendency to slip into the closest propinquity, or position of minimum potential, will be found to manifest itself.
However the hexactinellid spicules be arranged (and this is {454} not at all easy to determine) in relation to the tissues and chambers of the sponge, it is at least clear that, whether they be separate or be fused together (as often happens) in a composite skeleton, they effect a symmetrical partitioning of space according to the cubical system, in contrast to that closer packing which is represented and effected by the tetrahedral system[464].