REPORT ON THE HEXACTINELLIDA. 343 



it gives off, indeed, a smell like that of a burning animal body, but it does not expand 

 like other lithophites. If it is heated in a crucible over a strong fire it smells like 

 burned gore, assumes a darkish colour, and becomes finally dazzling white, so that it 

 cannot, like the ordinary Madrepores, become transformed into lime. Nor docs the 

 residue vitrify by the application of strong heat. A portion of this form gave a 

 yellowish colour to white oil of vitriol, which was due to the action of this acid on the 

 animal part. The stone on which this structure is fixed, and which Mr. Badiez brought 

 from Martinique, is a dense green lava mixed with crystals and dark prismatic schorl."^ 



In 1858, Bowerbank noted in the Philosophical Transactions (ph xxvi. p. 312) some 

 stellate spicules oi Dactylocalyx pumiceus, Stutchbury, as examples of his " trifurcato- 

 hexradiate stellate " and " spinulo-trifurcated hexradiate stellate spicules," and gave '^ a 

 good figure of one of these. 



The Macandrewia azorica, which Gray first described in 1859,^ and which he united 

 in a group along with Dactylocalyx and Myliusia callocyathes, does not belong, as 

 later accurate descriptions show, to this category, being in fact a Lithistid. The same 

 is true of Dactylocalyx prattii, Bowerbank, of which some typical skeletal spicules 

 are figured,* as weU as of Dactylocalyx hoiverhanJcii, Johnson, which Johnson described,* 

 and of which Bowerbank figured an isolated quadriradiate spicule in 1864 in his British 

 Spongiadse, vol. i. pi. ii. fig. 53. 



In his great Sponge System Gray formed in 1867" a special family — the Dactylo- 

 calycidse — within his order Corallispongia, and this family he characterised as " Sponges 

 with massive, expanded, or flabellate, the network with angular meshes." The members 

 of this family possess a "network irregular, not symmetrical," and consist of Macan- 

 dreioia and Myliusia and of the genus Dactylocalyx, which was partly identified with 

 Tphiteo7i, Valenciennes. 



The diagnosis of Dactylocalyx is as follows : — " Sponge expanded, with large sunken 

 groves and oscules on the upper and lower surface. Spicules of skeleton tuberculated ; 

 spicular network, rugose, tubercular. Sarcode with scattered, radiated, or stellate spicules, 

 divided into branches near the base, and with knobs at the tip of the rays. Sarcode 

 studded with many-rayed stellate spicules, the six principal rays diverging on aU sides, 

 and divided near the base into several elongated cylindrical linear rays, which diverge 

 from each other and are tipped wii\\ a small apical knob like the head of a pin." 



Besides the Dactylocalyx prattii, Bowerbank, which is a Lithistid, and does not there- 

 fore belong to this group, Gray established two other species of Dactylocalyx, namely, 



1 Eozier, Journal de Physique, October 1780, t. xvi. p. 315. 

 ^ Loc. cit., fig. 1. 



2 Proc. Zool. Soc. Land., vol. xxvii. p. 432 ; Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist, ser. 3, vol. v. p. 495. 

 * Phil. Trans., 1862, p. 747, pi. xxvii. fig. 8. 



» Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1863, p. 257 ; Ann. and Mag. Xat. Hist., ser. 3, vol. xiii. p. 257. 

 « Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1867, p. 505. 



