Sponges from South Australia. 305 



which certainly, as I have before stated, would have been of 

 very little use to myself without Hyatt's photograph. 



Another species of this genus appears to be represented in 

 Mr. Wilson's dried collection by three specimens, which may 

 be named and described as follows :— 



Stelospongus flabelliformis ^ n. sp. 



Compressed, wide, fan-shaped, stipitate j ribbed radiatingly 

 from the stem, which is long and terminated by a root-like 

 expansion, to the circumference, which is comparatively thin ; 

 ribs or rather ridges bifurcating once or twice in their course 

 to the circumference, corresponding to the divisions internally 

 of the excretory canal-systems; interunited irregularly on 

 both sides by sub-ridges, which thus give rise to a number 

 of concave depressions such as might have been caused 

 by the specimen having grown between two beds of small 

 pebbles, ending at the circumference in a series of pro- 

 cesses, which give the margin a denticulated form, each 

 process being a tubular extension of a vent, and the whole 

 arranged Pandean-pipe-like along the circumference. Con- 

 sistence now hard, more or less resilient. Colour grey exter- 

 nally (that is the colour of the incrustation), dark spono-e- 

 colour immediately underneath, lighter within. Surface 

 smooth, covered with a cribriform sandy incrustation, whose 

 minute interstices present great uniformity. Pores in the 

 dermal sarcode tympanizing the interstices of the incrustation. 

 Vents in the position mentioned. Structure internally com- 

 pact, consisting of massive fibro-reticulation, in which the 

 interstices are tympanized by the parenchymatous sarcode • 

 fibre of two kinds, viz. axiated or cored with foreign objects, 

 and simply keratose, the former vertical and the latter inter- 

 uniting or lateral ; the whole traversed by the branches of the 

 excretory canal-systems. Size of largest specimen 7 in. 

 high by 8 x ^ in. horizontally ; stem 3| in. long. 



Hob. Marine. 



Loc. Port Phillip Heads, South Australia. 



Obs. In one of the " three " specimens the body is much 

 more inflated, being 3 in. thick ; there are no ridges, and the 

 denticulated margin is very irregular ; in short the whole looks 

 like a coarse clumsy form of the above description. The 

 pebble-like impressions, to which I have above alluded, are 

 well represented in Hyatt's photograph of his Spongelia Far- 

 lovii, which came from the same neighbourhood (op. et loc. 

 cit. pi. xvii. fig. 14), and are the same as the " depressions" 

 on the surface of Taonura flabelliformis (' Annals,' 1882, 

 vol. x. p. 108). They appear to be produced by linear eleva- 



