SPONGES 45 
The type remained unique until I found a few at Inagua, Bahamas, in 1887. 
I did not meet with the species again until 1897, when I obtained a few on a 
beach on Pimlico Key, not far from Eleuthera, Bahamas. All thus far taken 
have been skeletons, the living sponge being unknown. 
The Tube Sponge also presents a species which is very local in distribu- 
tion. The first time I ever saw the Tube Sponge outside of a museum was on 
the Island of Inagua. Just to the north of Mathewstown are high cliffs which 
extend for about a mile along the water, terminating in a sandy beach to the 
northward. I visited this place in February, 1887, and during the preceding 
September a hurricane had swept over Inagua. ‘The waves caused by this tem- 
pest had separated a vast number of sponges from the neighboring reef and 
lagoon. The sea must have been very high, for it had deposited thousands of 
sponges in one great wind-row on the top ofthe cliffs near the beach. Here I 
found hundreds of Tube Sponges, nearly all of them fully macerated. ew of 
them were absolutely perfect; being mainly detached tubes, but I learned 
considerable about this species and brought away two or three hundred selec- 
ted specimens with me. 
In all of my explorations among the Bahamas and Florida keys, 1 have 
found the tube sponge living in one section only, although I have constantly 
searched for it. When I visited Highburn Key in April 1893, I found the 
first specimens I ever saw growing on small detatched reefs in the little harbor 
to the south of the key. The reefs on which they grew were well out on the 
edge of the channel that divides Highburn Key from a neighboring key, and 
the sponges were in from twenty-five to thirty feet of water. 
They were usually attached to dead coral and grew upright among hun- 
dreds of specimens of other sponges, but were always conspicuous when seen 
through the beautifully transparent water, on account of their brilliant orange 
