16 THE SPONGES OF THE WEST-CENTRAL PACIFIC 



Other specimens were collected dry, and very numerous ones were 

 studied alive in the field, all in the Palau Archipelago. 



This species takes the shape of a very shallow, obtuse cone or platter. 

 Actually, this is formed as a spiral, which overlaps so that a nearly perfect 

 cone results but with the spiral shape still obvious ; the angle of opening is 

 often about 150°. The angle of the cone is more acute in younger, smaller 

 specimens than in older, larger ones. The total diameter reaches at least 

 55 cm. The walls are rather uniformly about 3 mm thick, regardless of the 

 diameter of the whole sponge. The point of attachment, even of a very 

 large specimen, may be as little as 3 cm in diameter. It is practically sessile, 

 without stalk. 



The color in life was a dull ochre or drab, both on exterior and interior. 

 The consistency was very spongy and tough and astonishingly is still spongy 

 in dry specimens, indicating the relationship of the material of the fibers to 

 that of Spongia itself. 



The surface in life is nearly smooth, but there are (in many places) 

 shallow grooves, representing subdermal cavities into which the very thin 

 surface membrane has collapsed. These are exaggerated in dry specimens 

 on which they appear as grooves a little less than 1 mm wide and deep and a 

 little more than 1 mm apart, center to center. In other regions of irregular 



Text Figure No. 7. A portion of the fibrous skeleton of Phyllospongia Ickanis, X 182. 



The section is perpendicular to the surface, which is illustrated near the top of the figure. 



Bits of two of the ascending (cored) fibers show. 



