zoöns

There are plenty of examples in which such variations occur on the same stock, and we think they prove that the accepted ideas of what constitutes an individual or person among the sponges with a thick mesoderm and branching gastrovascular canals are entirely erroneous and founded on the deceptive resemblances of the branches of a sponge to those of other compound forms, which really arise from true buds and are true zoöns. Haeckel and others have regarded all the vase-shaped sponges as single individuals or zoöns, but this seems untenable, except in the group of Ascones.

1888, John Sterling Kingsley, The Riverside Natural History, volume 3, Kegan Paul, Trench, page 57