THE SPONGES OF THE WEST-CENTRAL PACIFIC 3 



based on species which also occur in my collections. Yet, how can we ever 

 know which, if any, are thus affected? 



The species that are identified here as being already named and de- 

 scribed also are open to further inquiry. The prior names thus involved are 

 often based on very scanty descriptions. Were more detailed information 

 to become available about the earlier designation, it might prove to belong 

 to a form which is not really conspecific with my specimens, and in this case 

 the latter should then receive a new name. Because of this situation, I have 

 described all the species equally, not -only those called new, but the others 

 as well. 



Except where revision is required, genera are not described, nor are 

 families, orders, and classes. Such are discussed and described in the 1936 

 monograph of the Phylum Porifera by de Laubenfels, Carnegie Institution 

 publication number 467. With a few minor exceptions, the sequence which 

 is employed in that work is also followed here. This should not be inter- 

 preted as expressing satisfaction with that classification. It was emphatically 

 characterized as being provisional. Incongruities clearly occur in it. An 

 example is the location of the genus Oxymycale, which fits the older diag- 

 nosis of the family Desmacidonidae, and is here still left in that family, 

 whereas it is evidently much closer to the genera Mycale and Carmia, which 

 are in the family Ophlitaspongiidae. Adherence to the 1936 outline is given 

 partly because I feel that this description of Pacific Sponges is not an ap- 

 propriate medium for extensive taxonomic revision and partly because I am 

 confident that more study, especially physiologic, should precede the ad- 

 mittedly drastic revision that is called for. 



For each species a camera lucida drawing is included as a text figure, 

 in order to provide maximum assistance to nonspecialists. In addition, some 

 25 species are illustrated by photographs. 



