FRESH-WATER SPONGE AND POLYZOON. 65 
NOTE ON A FRESH-WATER SPONGE AND 
POLYZOON FROM CEYLON. 
By N: Annanpate, D.Sc., F.A.8.B., 
Superintendent, Indian Museum. 
(With Plate I.) 
QHORTLY before leaving Colombo Dr. A. Willey was kind 
Ke enough to send me a fresh-water polyzoon that he had 
obtained from a pool on the roadside between Maradankadawala 
and Galapitagala, in the North-Central Province of Ceylon, on 
February 18, 1909. 
At the base of the polyzoon is a minute sponge which represents 
a species widely distributed in the East, but only recognized as 
distinct in 1907, viz., my Spongilla proliferens.* This sponge was 
originally described from Bengal, but is now known to occur in most 
parts of India and Burma, and has been found in Yunnan. The 
specimens recorded by Prof. Max Weber t from the Malay Archi- 
pelago as Spongilla cinerea, Carter, also belong to this species. The 
only fresh-water sponge hitherto recorded from Ceylon is Spongilla 
cartert,{ from which S. proliferens may easily be distinguished by 
the fact that there are numerous little pointed and spiny spicules 
free in its substance, and by the structure of the gemmule, which is 
covered with what appears to be a granular coat instead of the 
layers of cellular air spaces in which the gemmule of S. carteri 
is enclosed, and is armed with numerous little spined spicules. 
The sponge is of a brilliant green colour, and always small and very 
soft. S. proliferens may be distinguished from WS. lacustris, a race 
of which is common in Madras, by the fact that the aperture of its 
gemmule is provided with a small chitinous tube. 
The polyzoon itself, as Dr. Willey suggests, appears to be identical 
with the species I recently described as Pectinatella burmanica,§ 
but differs from that species in several features, probably due to 
environment. The genus Pectinatella consists of Phylactolematous 
Polyzoa with horseshoe-shaped tentacular crowns and statoblasts 
(resting reproductive bodies) of large size, and entirely surrounded 
by little hooked processes. The individual colonies (zoaria) have a 


Journ Asiat. Soc., Bengal, 1907, p. 15, fig. 1. 
Zool. Eregeb. Niederl. Ost-Ind., Vol. I., p. 35. 
Willey, Spolia Zeylanica, Vol. IV., p. 184. 
§ Rec, Ind, Mus., Vol. IV., p. 56 (1910). 
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