ADDENDUM TO THE MONOGRAPH OF AUSTRALIAN 



SPONGES. 



By R. von Lendenpeld, Ph.D. 



In the Annals and Magazine of Natui^al History, Ser. 5, Vol. 7, 

 No. 41, May 1881, p. 37.3-374 H. J. Carter describes a Sponge 

 from Bass' Straits, which should be placed in the Myxospongise, 

 and which has been omitted by me. 



The specimens at the disposal of Carter were dry, and so as no 

 reference is made to the structure of the sponge it will remain 

 doubtful to which genus it should be referred, Oscarella or Halisarca 

 (in my sense.) I place it provisionally in the former. With this 

 name it should be added to my previously mentioned Australian 

 species of Oscarellidse, 



OSCARELLA BASSANGUSTIORUM. Von Lendenfeld. 

 Halisarca Bassangustiorum. Carter (I.e.) 



I will give Carter's own description in full as the species is a 

 very doubtful one. (I.e.) 



Among the " dredgings " from Bass' Straits are two more or 

 less thin, light, corrugated, even-margined, sub-circular specimens, 

 about an inch in diameter each, one of which is dark purple, almost 

 black, and the other brown in colour. Both are chai-ged with 

 globular bodies like cells, about 3|-6,000ths inch in diameter ; but 

 while these are indistinct in one of them, they are well-defined, 

 spheroidal and capsular in the other. How far these specimens 

 may have been brought to this state by exposure in the waves and 

 on a hot dry beach I cannot say ; but to expect Halisarca after 

 such exposure to present any of its original features is out of the 

 question. All therefoi'e, that I can add is that the " brown " 

 specimen in a smaller state appears, again attached to Dictyocy- 

 lindrus reticulata (to be described hereafter) from the same locality 

 and charged with the same kind of spherical capsular bodies (? ova) 

 where it so far manifests all the appearance of Halisarca, that I can 

 hardly doubt that both are dried specimens of one and the same. 



