440 CEYLON PEARL OYSTER REPORT. 



But beyond this abundance of certain species there is no special feature to be noted. 

 The collection is an ordinary assemblage of shallow-water tropical forms, including a 

 few rare species and three new to science the most remarkable of which is the 

 Ramulina found in such abundance in deep water off Galle. Most of the species are 

 new records to Ceylon, and 50 are new to the Indian Ocean. Many of them have a 

 wide distribution in other seas, and at least 57 species are common to Ceylon and the 

 West Indies. 



Fig. 2. Itamidina henlmani, DAKIN. Nat. size. 



The collection of SPONGES is a very large one, containing about 150 species, nearly 

 80 of which are new to science. Moreover, the individuals of some of these species 

 are numerous, so that sponges bulk large in the fauna, especially in the Gulf of 

 Manaar. The Calcarea are few and small and the Hexactinellida not represented, 

 but the Tetractinellida, the Monaxonellida, and the Euceratosa present a rich and 

 varied assemblage of forms. Some of the species are cosmopolitan, many are common 

 Indo-Pacific forms ; only a few extend to the Red Sea, a few more to the Mediterranean, 

 and as many to the North Atlantic (Azores and even the British seas), half-a-dozen are 

 represented in the West Indies, and a dozen extend eastwards through the Malay 

 Archipelago. But much the closest affinity is shown with the fauna of Australia, as 

 110 less than 30 of the species in our collection are found also on the Australian coast. 

 Adding to this the other known Ceylonese species, Professor DENDY finds that 47 in 

 all out of the 75 species of sponges whose range is known to extend beyond Ceylon 

 seas are found in the Indo- Australian region. About two-thirds of the total number 

 of species are, however, peculiar to the Ceylon area which Professor DENDY speaks of 

 as "an extremely rich centre of sponge distribution." Some of the most notable 

 species from the Gulf of Manaar are shown on Plate II., tigs. 1 to 4. 



The Ceylon MEDUSAE comprise 29 species, 12 of which were new to science. They 

 are represented sparingly in all the other seas of the world, including the West 

 Indies, and rather more fully in the Malay archipelago. But there is no indication 



