346 PLATE XCII. 



spicula with one or both terminations more or less 

 hastate. This form is mostly found incorporated 

 with the primary lines of the skeleton near their distal 

 termination. They are as long as the acuate skeleton 

 ones but not more than about half their diameter. 



BATTEESBYIA BUCKLANDI. 

 Plate XCII. 



Hymeniacidon Bucldandi. Yol. ii, p. 227 ; Vol. iii, plate 



xsxviii, Mon. Brit. Spongiadse. 



In my description of this sponge under the above 

 designations in vol. II page 226, in the last paragraph 

 page 228, I have stated that " This sponge varies so 

 widely from the ordinary structure of Hymeniacidon 

 that I doubt much whether it should not have been 

 made the type of a new genus." At that time I had 

 not seen any other species of sponge with a similarly 

 remarkable series of skeleton spicula dispersed amidst 

 its interstitial membranes, and I therefore placed it in 

 the genus Hymeniacidon until further information 

 should arise to enable me to assign it to its proper 

 place in the systematical arrangement of our British 

 sponges, and it was not until several months after the 

 figure of the species was printed in Plate XXXVIII in 

 the present volume, that I received a specimen of a 

 second species of this remarkable genus from my friend 

 Captain Charles Tyler who informed me that the 

 specimen was from Florida. The British one, and the 

 new species, are very different in their external charac- 

 ters. The latter, although its skeleton is in perfect 

 structural accordance with the British sponge, 

 possesses none of the extreme solidity of that species, 

 and it differs materially in its external form and in the 

 forms of its auxiliary spicula. I have also received 

 from my friend Captain Tyler, a small fragment of 

 what is apparently a third species of the same genus, 

 which he received from Count Pourtales, who labelled 



