372 Mr, H. J. Carter on 



Internal structure sarcodie, much more than kerato-fibrous, 

 the latter consisting of a loosely reticulated fabric, whose 

 interstices are so wide and the tibres so small and scanty in 

 the centre of the sponge that it is hardly noticeable, thicken- 

 ing in structure and consistence towards the circumference, 

 and especially in the stem. Fibre stiff, of a clear amber-colour 

 and transparency, here and there cored with grains of quartz- 

 sand, supporting on the circumference the crust above men- 

 tioned, which is very thick, consisting of a reticulated dermo- 

 fibrous sarcodic structure, densely charged with foreign 

 material, presenting externally the kind of " surface " above 

 described, which is penetrated on the inner side by fine 

 straight filaments of the skeletal fabric, the latter (still further 

 in) supporting the sarcodic parenchyma, which is largely tra- 

 versed by the canals of the excretory system that empty 

 themselves into a cylindrical, central, cloacal, tubular cavity, 

 which terminates in the single vent mentioned, or in plurality, 

 when the vents also are more than one in number. Size 

 variable, the largest specimen about 5 in. long, one third of 

 which is stem ; head 2 in. in its greatest diameter ; stem, 

 which expands upwards into the head and downwards into the 

 root, ^ in. in diameter in its narrowest part. 



Loc. Port Phillip Heads and Port Western. 



Ohs. When a vertical section of this species is made the 

 great cylindrical, cloacal canal of the centre, which in Stelo- 

 spongus Icevis is in the midst of dense fibrous keratose struc- 

 ture, is found to be in the midst of almost entirely parenchy- 

 matous sarcode, for the skeletal fibre liere is so scanty that the 

 greater part of the body appears to be composed of sarcode, so 

 that in this matter alone 8. cribrocrusta and 8. Icevis are totally 

 different ; yet it sometimes seems to me possible that they 

 may be the extreme structures of the same form and genus 

 respectively, hence the same generic name has been used for 

 both. 



Hircinia jlagelUformisj n. sp. (dry). 



Erect, cauliform, cylindrical, round, solid, long stems of 

 difterent lengths, growing together and branching scantily 

 from an expanded base of the same structure ; round at the 

 free end and decreasing in size backwards so gradually that 

 one 28 in. long may be only ^ in. in diameter at the base and 

 \ in. at the other extremity. Consistence firm and stifi", espe- 

 cially when dry. Colour amber-brown. Surface uniformly 

 presenting small conuli arranged in more or less broken sinu- 

 ous lines intertympanized by homogeneous fine sarcode charged 

 with small epithelial cells supported by the subjacent keratose 



