REPORT ON THE HEXACTINELLIDA. 115 



preserved specimen of Asconema setiibalense, which was dredged "in 374 fathoms on 

 rocky ground off Cape St. Vincent, during Mr. Gwyn Jeffrey's cruise in 1870," is described 

 by Wyville Thomson,^ and depicted in an excellent woodcut. He calls it " a complete 

 vase of very elegant form, nearly ninety centimetres in diameter at the top, and about 

 sixty in height. The sponge came up folded together, and had much the appearance of 

 a piece of coarse greyish-coloured blanket. Its minute structure is however very 

 beautiful. It consists, like Holteuia, of two netted layers, an outer and an inner, formed 

 by the symmetrical interlacing of the four cross branches of five-rayed spicules; and as 

 in Holtenia and Rossella, the sarcode is full of extremely minute five and six-rayed 

 spicules, which, however, have a thoroughly distinct character of their own, with here 

 and there a very beautiful rosette-like spicule, another singular modification of the 

 scxradiate type characteristic of the group. Between the two netted surfaces the sponge 

 surfoce is formed of loose curving meshes of loosely aggregated bundles of long single 

 fibres, sparsely mixed with spicules of other forms. This sponge seems to live fixed 

 to a stone. There are no anchoring spicules, and the bottom of the vase, which in our 

 two specimens is a good deal contracted and has a square shape something like an 

 old Irish " mether," has apparently been torn from some attachment." 



Carter, in his paper on the Hexactinellida,^ has noted certain agreements between 

 Asconema and CnUeromorpha. He says — " In Asconema the small sexradiate spicules 

 with short-spined arms (of which the vertical one on one side is often deficient) and 

 formed together in groups, recall to mind the same kind of spicules (which form a 

 rectangularly reticular network) on the surface of C rater omoiyha meyeri and Rossella 

 velata. Indeed, so far as this goes, Asconema might be considered a sessile vase-like 

 representative on the coast of Portugal of the cup-like head of Crateromorpha found 

 about the Philippines only." 



Some siliceous elements figured by Kent as skeletal spicules of Asconema setubalense,^ 

 which do not exhibit the hexradiate type, were declared by Carter not to belong to this 

 Hexactinellid but to have been most probably intruded from a PackastreUa abyssi. 



With regard to the affinities of this form among the Hexactinellida, Marshall * conjec- 

 tures that Asconema, which he refers as an aberrant form to his Pleionacidge, is closely 

 related to Lanuginella, Schmidt, that the latter, in fact, is probably a young Asconema. 



Norman reported* that, during the voyage of the " Travailleur," "a little bunch of 

 the strong coarse spicula of the great Asconema setubalense was dredged in the Bay of 

 Biscay, in about 600 fathoms." 



As a second species belonging to the genus Asconema, Kent, Oscar Schmidt 

 described Miis Asconema Icentii. This was found in from 300 to 1500 fathoms, in the 



I The Depths of the Sea, 1873. = Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist, ser. 4, vol. xii. pp. 369, 370, 1873. 



s Loc. cit., figs. 10, 11. * Zeitschr.f. miss. ZooL, Bd. xxvii. p. 121. 



» Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 5, vol. vi. p. 436. " Spongien des Meerbusens vou Mexico, p. 65, 1880. 



