70 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [cHap. 11. 
on the morning of September 6th we sounded and 
dredged in lat. 59° 36’, long. 7° 20’ (Station 12), with a 
depth of 580 fathoms and a ‘warm area’ temperature 
of 6°4.C. The dredging here was most interesting. 
The bottom was for the first time ‘ Atlantic ooze,’ a 
fine bluish-grey tenacious calcareous mud, with some 
sand and a considerable admixture of G'lobigerina. 
Imbedded in this mud there came up an extraordinary 
number of silicious sponges of most remarkable and 
novel forms. Most of these belonged to an order 
which had been described by the writer a couple of 
years before as ‘ Porifera vitrea,’ a tribe at that time 
but little known, but which have since become very 
familiar to us as denizens of the abyssal zone. 
Working from more extended data, Professor Oscar 
Schmidt afterwards defined the group more exactly 
as a family, under the name of Hezxactinellide—the 
term which I shall here adopt. 
The relations and peculiarities of this singular 
eroup will be fully discussed in a future chapter. 
The most characteristic forms which we met with on 
this occasion were the beautiful sea-nests of the 
Setubal shark-fishers, Holtenia carpenteri, Wy. T. 
(Fig. 6), and the even more strange Hyalonema 
lusitanicum, BARBOZA DE Bocagee, closely related to 
the glass-rope sponges of Japan which have so long 
perplexed naturalists to determine their position in 
the animal series, and their relation to their constant 
companion the parasitic Palythoa. 
Holtenia carpenteri is an oval or sphere 90 to 100 
mm. in height, with one large oscular opening at the 
top about 380 mm. in diameter, whence a simple 
evlindrical cavity cupped at the bottom passes down 
