292 Mr. II. J. Carter on some West-Indian 



e,f). No. 1 is chieflj confiued to the fibre, and the rest, 

 of various sizes, more or less abundantlj scattered throughout 

 tlie softer suhstance, but especially abundant in the dermal 

 layer, where the inequianchorates are present in the form of 

 rosettes. Size of largest piece, of which there are several, 

 about 5 X 2^ X 1 inch. 



Hab. Marine. Growing over all kinds of objects in it3 

 course, which seems to have been vagrant about the sea- 

 bottom, as some of the pieces, besides enclosing shells, present 

 the waterworn appearance of having been subjected to attri- 

 tion in shallow water, which may account for the pulpy 

 amorphous conditioii of the dermal layer. 



Loc. Puerto Cabello. 



Ohs. This sponge in structure and spiculation is very like 

 Esijerin lingua ; only the smaller end of the large inequian- 

 chorate is proportionally longer in the latter, and not so round 

 Avhen viewed in front. Like E. lingua, too, the confusedness 

 of the general structure in both species seems to have been 

 broken down through some cause or other. With the excep- 

 tion of the pointed process at the small end of the minute 

 anchorate, there is very little else to make it differ from E. 

 lingua, whose representative it may be in the West Indies. 

 Out of all my mountings (and 1 have several of different 

 kinds of Esperice from different parts of the world), there is 

 only one in which this character is present ; and that is a 

 small specimen in the late Dr. Bowerbank's collection, now in 

 the British Museum, labelled "Comoro Is., Mozambique," 

 wherein every other part so agrees with the West-Indian one 

 that, without the labelling, I should have adjudged it to this 

 locality ; but, in Schmidt's report of the German expedition 

 to the North Sea in 1871, there is a figure of this kind of 

 process in a minute inequianchorate about " O'Oo millim." 

 (Taf. i. fig. 7)— tliat is, about 3-6000ths or l-2000th inch in 

 '''■Esperia anceijs,^'' =Desniacidon ance/ps {I. c), which he con- 

 sidered a " variety." It is, however, characteristic of the 

 inequianchorate in the Hyndmanina (see the illustrations of 

 HalicJiondria Fattersoni, Bk., Brit. Spong. vol. iii. pi. xlvi. 

 fig. 5, and Ridley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1881, in Alebion 

 pjroxivium, p. 119, pi. x. fig. 8, h), where the latter is 6- 

 GOOOths inch long, or twice the size of Schmidt's and my own 

 specimens. 



Further Observations on the Esperina. 



Having thus given a description of the sjiecimen of Esjieria 

 obtained when the ' Argo ' was at Puerto Cabello, I will now 

 continue my observations on the group. Commencing with 



