6 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 72 



these are subject to conspicuous seasonal variations; however, position, 

 fixation, and aggregation of the gemmules are often useful additional 

 criteria, particularly in those genera and species in which they firmly 

 adhere to the substratum. 



Abbreviations Used in the Text 



AAR — A. A. Racek 



AmstM — Zoologisch Museum, Amsterdam 



AusM — Australian Museum, Sydney 



BM — British Museum of Natural History 



HM — Zoologisches Museum, Hamburg 



IM — Indian Museum 



JTP— J. T. Penney 



LeidM — Rijksmuseum van Natuiirlijke Historic, Leiden 



MCB — Mus^e du Congo Beige (Mus^e Royal de I'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren) 



MG — Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Geneve 



MNHP — Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris 



PAS — Philadelphia Academy of Sciences 



RMS — Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, Stockholm 



USNM — United States National Museum 



ZMB — Zoologisches Museum, Berlin 



Family Spongillidae 



Spongilladae Gray, 1867, p. 550. 



Spongillidae Carter, 1881a, p. 77.— Vejdovsky, 1883b, p. 15.— Potts, 1887, p. 



158.— Weltner, 1895, p. 114.— Annandale, 1911c, p. 27.— De Laubenfels, 



1936, p. 34.— Jewell, 1952, p. 445.— Penney, 1960, p. 4. 



In spite of the latest revising efforts of De Laubenfels (1936) and 

 Jewell (1952), this doubtlessly conglomerate family of Demospongiae 

 must still be considered as extremely ill-defined, if defined at all. 

 De Laubenfels' (1936, p. 34) statement that "This family as here 

 considered is quite frankly defined as consisting of those sponges 

 occurring normally in fresh or occasionally in brackish water," 

 may be taken as a clear indication of the deficiency of our present 

 information on the interrelationship of the many "spongillid" genera 

 to each other, as well as to those of the marine Demospongiae in 

 general. While the relationship of most gemmule-producing freshwater 

 genera is by now fairly well established, the aflBnities of a great number 

 of normally fresh- or brackish-water Porifera have yet to be demon- 

 strated. It is therefore quite obvious that a subdivision of such a 

 most superficially defined family into a number of subfamilies not 

 only is fuUy unwarranted, but at present absolutely impossible. 

 The data obtained from the present study have already demonstrated 

 the fallacy of a fiu'ther retention of the two subfamilies Spongillinae 

 Vejdovsky and Meyeninae Vejdovsky, separated from each other 



