170 Prof. A. Dendy on 
the confident opinion that his sponge is identical with the 
Spongia infundibuliformis of Linnzeus. 
The shortly-stalked, thin-walled, widely funnel-shaped 
form of the sponge is highly characteristic when taken in 
conjunction with the skeleton arrangement and spiculation. 
The species seems to occur abundantly in the neighbourhood 
of the Shetland Islands and Hebrides. Bowerbank records 
it from as far south as Guernsey. 
Gray saw quite correctly that this species could not 
rightly be included in Bowerbank’s genus Jsodictya, nor 
yet in the older genus Halichondria, but he was very unfor- 
tunate in the diagnosis of his new genus Tragosia, which is 
quite inadequate. It runs as follows :— 
‘‘Sponge funnel-shaped or fan-shaped, branches anasto- 
mosing, minutely hispid. Skeleton regularly netted. 
** «Phe spicula of the primary lines of the skeleton are 
needle-shaped, with their apices directed inwards; those of 
the secondary lines are fusiform.’ ” 
I do not know why the second paragraph of this diagnosis 
is placed in inverted commas by Gray, but it contains a 
singular error, for the apices of the styli are, of course, not 
directed inwards but, as usual, outwards. The character 
which seems especially to have impressed Dr. Gray in 
founding his genus is the presence of the two kinds of 
megascleres, stylote and oxeote, the former in the primary 
and the latter in the secondary lines of the skeleton. As 
this feature also occurs in Bowerbank’s Jsodictya dissimilis, 
Gray includes that species in his 7ragosia. It was Dr. 
Bowerbank, however, who first pointed out the similarity 
of the two species in this respect, although they are very 
different as regards external form. 
The genus Tragosia has been accepted by Vosmaer, 
Hanitsch and Topsent. The former, in Bronn’s ‘ Klassen 
und Ordnungen des Thierreichs’ [1887], reproduces a 
figure of the external form from Bowerbank, but he does 
little, if anything, to improve the diagnosis. I cannot, 
moreover, agree with him in considering Schmidt’s genus 
Cribrochalina {1870] asa synonym of Jragosia. Schmidt’s 
description leaves very little doubt that the type of his 
genus at any rate—C. infundibulum—is a true Chalinine 
sponge. Nor has the suggestion that Carter’s Semisuberites 
[1877] may be another synonym been justified by sub- 
sequent events. 
Hanitsch [1894] adds nothing to our knowledge of the 
genus, but his diagnosis is interesting because he expressly 
states that there are no microscleres. Topsent also, although 
