312 Mr. H. J. Carter on 



in this state are so relative that they are not of much value 

 in a specitic point of view. 



Hircinia inter texta ) n. sp. 



Specimen wet. Oblong, erect, like a piece of board an inch 

 thick, slightly thinning towards the sides and upper border, 

 whose margins are rounded and irregularly undulated, sessile, 

 spreading below. Consistence firm and resilient, very light 

 when dry. Colour, when fresh, " grey/' now brownish grey. 

 Surface on both sides uniformly covered with monticular, 

 single-pointed conuli averaging l-24th inch apart and about 

 the same in height above the sunken intervening dermis, 

 which unites them together more or less linearly ; dermis 

 consisting of a beautifully reticulated, soft, grey fibre without 

 foreign objects, which dries light brown, and whose inter- 

 stices are tympanized by a thin transparent sarcode in which 

 the pores are situated, supported by another subjacent reticu- 

 lation of amber-coloured keratcse fibre, which, resting on the 

 ends of the arenaceous vertical filaments, thus together form 

 the conuli and support the dermis. Vents large, chiefly on 

 the upper margin. Internal structure consisting of a mass of 

 reticulated fibre of three kinds, like the dermis, viz. : — 1, large, 

 scanty, cored with foreign objects, vertical ; 2, middle-sized, 

 exclusively amber-coloured keratine, lateral ; 3, microscopic, 

 soft when fresh, hard and transparent when dry, intertextural, 

 whose interstices, tympanized by thin poriferous sarcode, 

 occupy the rest of the space and, traversed by the branches 

 of the excretory canal-system, complete the parenchyma. Size 

 of specimen 12 in. high by 3^x1^ in. horizontally in its 

 greatest dimensions. As a slice has been cut off' from one 

 side perpendicularly, the probability is that this specimen 

 was much wider, perhaps double the present width, when 

 entire. 



Hab. Marine. 



Loc. Port Phillip Heads, South Australia. Depth 18 fath. 



Obs. The most striking feature in this specimen is the pre- 

 sence of the microscopic, intertextural fibre filling up the 

 interstices of the skeleton, which can only be well seen in a 

 dried fragment ; in which the predominance also of the keratine 

 over the mineral element shows that it is in the opposite 

 state, in this respect, to that of Hircinia solida, whose weight 

 is rendered much greater simply by the predominance of the 

 mineral element, while that of H. intertexta is comparatively 

 light, as above stated. 



This is the second species which I have briefly described in 



