410 Mr. H. J. Carter on two new Sponges 



No doubt it was on this occasion that the fragments of 

 sponge still preserved in the British Museum were obtained. 

 Rolled over and over by the dredge, probably in a rough sea, 

 and mixed up with the sandy mud of the bottom, it is not ex- 

 traordinary that they should have passed into the state men- 

 tioned. The only part extraordinary is, that at such a time 

 and under such circumstances as those recorded in the book 

 to which I have alluded, the dredge should have been put 

 overboard at all. No one but a cool and intrepid scientific 

 investigator of the highest type could achieve such results 

 as were obtained in this Antarctic Expedition. Well might 

 England be proud of such men ! 



With this feeling, then, it will easily be conceived that, 

 however uninviting the remnants of this sponge appeared, the 

 fact of their having been obtained when most men would have 

 been making their vessel snug and sailing away from such an 

 inhospitable locality demanded the little exertion which their 

 examination would entail on one sitting quietly at home by 

 his fireside. 



Hence they were examined (" overhauled," to use a nautical 

 expression very appropriate here) bit by bit, and carefully 

 scrutinized, with the most re-laying results, as will presently 

 be seen. 



Among the fragments were observed pieces four inches long ; 

 there was evidently a porous surface on one side and a caver- 

 nous structure on the other, both like those of Hyalojiema 

 (Cai-teria^Gvaj) and HolfeniajMS[y. Thomson (see figures of the 

 latter in Phil. Trans. 1870, pi. 69 &c.). The spicules belong- 

 ing to the fragments were of three kinds, viz. acerate, anchor-, 

 and fork-headed. It was therefore evidently a deep-sea 

 Tethi/a. Subsequently tufts of long anchor- and fork-headed 

 spicules were found attached to some of the fragments ; and 

 these as evidently belonged to the base of the sponge, being 

 the means by which it was fixed to the muddy bottom. Thus 

 many points presented themselves which led to the conjecture 

 that the sponge must have been in form of body something like 

 Carteria and Holtenia,\^'\\\c\\ in this respect are nearly identical, 

 • — not possessing podal beards of spicules eighteen inches 

 long, like Mr. Kent's noble specimen of Pheronema Grayi in 

 the British Museum, dredged up off the coast of Portugal, in 

 the yacht ' Noma,' in 1870, but with short spiculous tufts not 

 more than an inch in length. 



Up to this point, then, inference was all that I had to depend 

 on for the original form of this sponge, when, by good fortune, 

 among the mass I found a fully developed ovum or, rather, 

 young Tethya, about one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter, 



