50 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 272 



of live sponge ranging from soft to very hard, dried skeleton usually 

 rigid. 



Megascleres as a rule smooth, stout, and very abrujitly pointed 

 amphioxea, ranging to amphistrongyla, sometimes bearing irregular 

 and small spines in their central portion; length range 230-275 fx, width 

 range 19-21 /x. 



Microscleres have not yet been recorded. 



Gemmoscleres very slender, cylindrical, and nearly straight am- 

 phistrongyla, their extremities often armed with a terminal spine, 

 finely covered mth very small spinules which seem to increase slightly 

 in size towards the tips of the scleres; average length 52-56 n, width 

 3-4 M. 



Gemmules apparently very rare in mature sponge, occurring singly 

 in the basal membrane of the sponge and firmly adhering to the sub- 

 stratum; they are spherical, about 350 n in diameter, with a feebly 

 developed granular pneumatic coat apparently without air spaces, but 

 with a strong outer sheath of spongin in continuity with the basal 

 membrane of the sponge; gemmoscleres embedded in the j^neumatic 

 coat more or less strictly tangentially, not forming a mosaic layer but 

 crossing each other at all angles; foramen produced into a straight 

 porus tube. 



Distribution. — Kanging from the Phihppines, the type locality, to 

 China, Japan, and the tropical west coast of Africa, the latter record 

 most probably based on an erroneous identification. 



Color in life. — Recorded as gray to green. 



Discussion. — Annandale (1909h), in the original description of this 

 species, expressed some doubt as to its generic position, a view that 

 was perpetuated by Stephens (1919) and all subsequent writers. In- 

 deed, Stratospongilla dementis displays a number of featui-es quite 

 atypical for the genus into which it has been provisionally placed: its 

 megascleres are very like those of the genus Eunapius; its gemmo- 

 scleres display close affinities to those of the E. nitens group of species, 

 and their arrangement on the gemmules is vastly different from that 

 usually found in the genus Stratospongilla; free microscleres, as found 

 in the majority of members of this latter genus, are absent. On the 

 other hand, however, the gemmules lack the large polygonal air spaces 

 of all Eunapius sp. and certainly possess criteria tyjDical for the genus 

 Stratospongilla. 



Annandale and Kawamura (1916), after studying a considerable 

 number of specimens from Japan, found that S. dementis seems to 

 form three different types of growth, each vastly different from the 

 other. The first phase are flat crusts of lichenoid outline; the second 

 more massive than the first, often bright green, sometimes producing 

 branches, and with large and conspicuous oscula; and the third 



