SILICIOUS AND HORNY SPONGES WILSON. 441 



2. Acanthostyles, 50-75 |x long. Head and shaft spinose, but 

 usually a region next the head is bare or less spinose than the rest 

 of shaft. 



3. Long slender dermal styles, 200-250 by about 6 jx, are scattered 

 tangentially in the dermal membrane. Very commonly the head is 

 perceptibly spinose at a magnification of 600; in other spicules the 

 spinulation is absent or not perceptible at this magnification. 



4. Small dermal styles, 80-100 by 4-5 pi, the head slightly tylote 

 and minutely spinose ; radially projecting, abundant. These and the 

 underlying tracts of longer tangential dermal styles make a dermal 

 reticulum with meshes 100-120 \l wide. 



5. Isochelae 10-12 [x long, at surface and in interior; abundant. 

 No toxas were found. The horny fiber sometimes splits off slender 

 shreds which at first glance look like toxas. 



Holotype.— Cat. No. 21256, U.S.N.M. 



The Albatross sponge, along with several others, is certainly close 

 to C. frondifera (Bowerbank) from East Indian and Australian 

 waters. Ridley, 1884 (p. 449), doubtless refers to the tendency in 

 this species to become tubular when he says that the branches anasto- 

 mose freely " forming a number of deep angular cells, open above 

 and below and more or less at the sides also, owing to the fenestrae 

 left between the branches." The type has toxas and lacks the small 

 radial dermal styles. The distribution to date is given in detail in 

 Ridley and Dendy 1887 (p. 149). 



Topsent 18925 (p. 3), records the species for the Red Sea. Lind- 

 gren 1898 (p. 309 )_, records it for the Sea of Java. Dendy (1905) 

 (p. 170), records the species for Ceylon and merges in it C. coralli- 

 tincta Dendy (1889), also from Ceylon. He adds that "the slender 

 styli or tylostyli may form a fairly distinct dermal skeleton, in which 

 they are either irregularly scattered or arranged in more or less defi- 

 nite radiating brushes. The bases of these spicules are sometimes 

 minutely spined." Dendy somewhat later, 1916& (p. 128), while in- 

 clining to regard C. frondifera as " a very variable and widely dis- 

 tributed species," again sets up G. corallitincta as a separate species, 

 but still later 19216 (p. 65), adds: " I am not at all sure that the dis- 

 tinction between this species and Clathria procera (Ridley) can be 

 maintained, and both may be merely varieties of C. frondifera. 11 

 Dendy, 1916 (p. 128), mentions the presence of large pseudoscula on 

 prominent parts of his C. corallitincta which would thus seem to 

 share in the tube-forming habit. 



Hentschel, 1912 (p. 360), records the species from the Aru Islands, 

 and notes that his specimens are in places tubular. He distinguishes 

 from the type two new varieties, one of which, variety dichela, has 



