NO. 17 NEW SPONGES— DE LAUBENFELS II 



This specimen is partly a hollow digitate structure i by 1 by 6.5 cm, 

 with walls 2 mm thick, or slightly thicker. To this are added some 

 vague fragments, apparently indicating that this is a process broken 

 off from a more or less massive main portion. The color as preserved 

 in alcohol is whitish, with a decidedly yellowish tinge. The consistency 

 is stony but brittle. The surface is almost level, but does possess 

 numerous low tubercles. It is lipostomous, no oscules or pores being 

 evident, unless the central hollow be regarded as a cloaca or oscule. 

 The internal structure is densely crowded, in a confused manner, with 

 spicules not symmetrically placed; they are tylostyles with fusiform 

 shafts. Their total dimensions are about 20 fx by 500 jx. The dermal 

 spicules are not conspicuously smaller than those in the endosome. 



The only other species at present recorded from the genus Ridleia 

 is oviformis Dendy (1888, p. 515). It was a flask-shaped sponge with 

 a hollow prolongation similar to the one obtained by this expedition, 

 but its spicules were not only much smaller, 2 /a by 200 /a to 14 /a by 

 goo {i, but in addition the dermal ones were definitely smaller than 

 the rather scanty endosomal ones. This is clearly the species closest 

 to the new one here described. 



Named for the late Prof. Arthur Dendy, of London. 



Family AXINELLIDAE Ridley and Dendy 



ANACANTHAEA Row 



ANACANTHAEA REA, n. sp. 



Holotype. — U.S.N.M. no. 22301. 



There were two specimens each collected at station 26, latitude 

 i8°3o'2o" N., longitude 66°22'o5" W. to latitude i8°30'3o" N., longi- 

 tude 66°23'o5" W., February 7, 1933, 2)Z to 40 fathoms. 



Each specimen is amorphous, the irregular mass being in one 

 case 3 by 4 by 5 cm and in the other 5 by 7 by 8 cm. The color is 

 pinkish gray, the consistency cartilaginous, difficult to cut. There is 

 evidence of a cortex, and the surface is pronouncedly tuberculate, 

 with tubercles about 2 mm across and i mm high. As seen from 

 above, these tubercles are arranged over the surface so as to appear 

 as hexagonal areas. Perhaps the pores are in the cracks between these 

 tubercles. They, and the oscules, could not be made out with certainty. 

 The internal structure is dense, heavy, and with conspicuously granu- 

 lar amoebocytes. There is a peripheral region in which the spicules 

 are almost at right angles to the confused core. The spicules them- 

 selves consist of diactines, 2 /x to 7 /a in diameter and about 300 yn 



