[: 417.3 
VI. Description of a new Species of Euplectella (Euplectella Cucumer, 0.). 
By Professor Owen, F.R.S., V.P.L.S. 
Read February 17th, 1857. 
IN 1841 I communicated to the Zoological Society of London a description of a new 
generic form of reticulate Aleyonoid Sponge, represented by one of the most singular and 
beautiful, as well as the rarest, of the marine productions with which the researches of 
Mr. Hugh Cuming in the Philippine Islands had enabled him to enrich his famous 
Natural-History collection*. For this genus the name Zuplectellat was proposed, indi- 
cative of the exquisite regularity and complexity of the interweaving of its component 
threads. 
The characters of the genus are:—a cylindroid hollow form of body, closed at the 
wider end by an irregular network, and at the narrower end by the terminal tuft of finer 
filaments into which the parietal fibres are there resolved. 
The parietal fibres, or those that constitute the wall of the cylinder, are regularly dis- 
posed, and intersect. each other at definite and nearly equal distances throughout its 
extent. They consist of longitudinal (Pl. XXI. fig. 1, c, d, e), transverse (¢), and oblique 
fibres, the latter being of two kinds (o, 0), winding spirally round the cylinder, but in 
opposite directions: (see magnified view of part of the parietes, Pl. XXI. fig. 4). The 
longitudinal and transverse fibres are the thickest: they are arranged at intervals of from 
one to two lines, averaging one line and a half apart, and divide the cylinder-wall into 
square spaces (a) of about the latter diameter. The longitudinal fibres (fig. 4, b) are 
external to the transverse ones (£), to which they are bound by the oblique or spiral 
fibres; these are, some external, some internal, to the others, and they close by their 
decusastion alternate quadrate intervals (+) between the longitudinal and transverse fibres. 
The angles of the alternate open squares are intersected by finer and less regular oblique 
fibres, which reduce their area more or less to a circular form (fig. 4, a). : Lib the 
It appeared, in the first-described species, that the nne pilky. filaments into d^ : m 
“parietal fibres were resolved at the small end of the eylindroid, had been M pi d iva 
by violence from some other body. The subject of the present description, which has been 
; by my friend Dr. Arthur Farre, F.R.S., has 
rai confided EE NE hich it was attached by the 
been fortunately preserved, along with the foreign body to w SEPA Jes 
terminal filaments: such mode of attachment may now, therefore, be v pene 
characters of Euplectella as above defined. i mas ded on a specimen eight inches j 
The first-described species of this rare genus was : 
in length, of a slightly conical form, two inches across the base, and gradually and pro- 
gressively decreasing in diameter to the truncated apex, de is one inch and a quarter 
in longest diameteri. _ ring 
* Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 
t Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iii. pl. 13. a 
i iii. p. 205. + Gr. eù, well, rAéxw, I weave. 
