REPORT ON THE HEXACTINELLIDA. 119 



provided, like the similarly formed four transverse rays, with fine outwardly directed 

 prongs, and is smooth only on its inmost portion. 



The gastral skeleton is quite similar. Here too pentacts of median size occur as 

 hypogastralia. These have rough pointed extremities and a knob-like rudiment of the 

 sixth ray, while the four cruciate transverse rays of the hexact pinuli, in which the 

 freely projecting proximal ray is covered with scaly prongs like a fir cone, lie in the 

 gastral membrane itself. The distal which is as long as the transverse rays, is like the 

 latter beset, except in its inmost portion, with small outwardly directed prominences. 

 They diS'er from the autodermalia only in this, that the freely projecting fir-cone-like ray 

 is here somewhat more slender, although in both it runs out to a point. 



Subfamily 2. Sympagellin^, 



Ovoid, thick-walled, usually (perhaps always) stalked goblets, with smooth, thin upper 

 margin. Between the principal b exacts small discohexasters and long diacts. 



Genus 1. Sympagella, 0. Schmidt. 



1870. 0. Schmidt, Grundziige einer Spongienfaima des atlant. Gebietes, p. 15. 



1872. Gray, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. ix. p. 457. 



1873. Carter, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. xi. p. 283. 

 1873. Carter, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. xiL p. 360. 



1875. Marshall, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zool., SiippL, p. 142, 1875. 



1876. Marshall, Zeirschr. f. wiss. Zool., Bd. xxvii. p. 127. 

 1881. Milne-Edwards, Comptes rendus, xciii. p. 931. 



History. — Under the name Sympagella nux, 0. Schmidt described and figured a 

 Hexactinellid obtained off Florida from a depth of 98 to 123 fathoms; it presented the 

 form either of a single individual with an ellipsoidal body, about 1 cm. high, with a 

 terminal osculum and a simple stalk, or of a branched stem with several terminal 

 individuals of similar nature. 



In the membrane covering the external surface of the body and lining the gastral cavity 

 0. Schmidt found pentact pinuli with a rudimentary sixth ray, and in the latter situation 

 also "nodular hexacts." In the parenchyma were numerous small hexaets with three 

 Itarbs situated on the er^d of each ray. In the stalk were long tubercula united by 

 transverse hour-glass-shaped connectives. It was probably on account of these ladder- 

 like structures that Gray' in 1872 placed Sympagella along with Farrea in his family 

 Farreadse. 



In 1873 Carter^ discovered in Sympagella nux "rosettes with rays multitudinous, of 

 unequal length, without heads, flexed outwards and arranged en fleur-de-lis ; pappiform." 



' Notes on the Classification of the Sponges, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. ix. p. 457. 

 '■^ Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. xii. p. 361. 



