BRITISH SPONGIAD^l. 327 



Colour. Dried, light yellow brown. 

 Habitat. Coast of Devonshire, Montagu and Mrs. 

 Griffiths. 



Examined. In the dried state. 



The short description of this sponge by Montagu is 

 very correct as far as it goes. Dr. Johnston never having 

 had the advantage of seeing the type specimen has placed 

 it in his ' History of British Sponges' as a synonym of 

 Spongia limbata, but it differs from that sponge not only 

 specifically but generically. The type specimen of Montagu, 

 in the possession of Dr. Grant, consists of a number of 

 short undivided lobate branches, rising irregularly from an 

 ill-defined common central stalk. The branches seldom 

 exceed half an inch in height, and the terminations are 

 nearly hemispherical. The oscula are simple, irregularly 

 dispersed, and rarely exceed three or four in number to 

 each branch, one frequently being terminal. The whole 

 surface of the sponge is porous, and the general texture is 

 coarser and less elastic than that of Chalina limbata to which 

 Johnston refers it. In a second specimen of this sponge, 

 for which I am indebted to my kind friend, the late Mrs. 

 Griffiths, the lobate character is evidently due to its being 

 parasitical on a branching Zoophyte, the ramifications of 

 which it has followed, but it has not entirely enveloped it. 

 The specimen is nearly the same in size and general cha- 

 racter as the type one, but not in so good a state of general 

 preservation. The dermal membrane in the type specimen 

 is nearly destroyed, but in the second specimen it is in 

 good condition. A few of the skeleton spicula are distri- 

 buted on its surface ; the true tension spicula are minute and 

 occur at intervals in patches of considerable numbers. I could 

 not detect retentive spicula in any part of the membrane. 



The symmetrical arrangement of the skeleton is less 

 apparent towards the centre of the branches than it is near 

 the circumference, where it becomes very regular ; the 

 primary or divergent lines being formed of spicula, all of 

 which have their apices towards the external surface of the 

 sponge ; but in the secondary, or circumferential, and the 



