New Species of Sponges. 



6v 



whether they wore cemented together by silica at the 

 points where their rays are in contact. Professor Sollas, 

 in an able paper on the structure and affinities of the genus 

 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Vol. 30, p. 3()fi), asserts "that 

 they are separate, and not united either by envelopment in 

 a common coating or by ankylosis," whereas it has seemed 

 to me ^hat a certain degree of organic union must have 

 existed to have allowed even the partial preservation of the 

 mesh-work of the body-wall in the fossil state, and I have 

 regarded the delicate film of pyi'ites which extends over 

 the mesh-work in many specimens, as indicating a connect- 

 ed spicular membrane which served to hold the larger 

 spicules in position. From the study of the Quebec speci- 

 mens I etill think a certain f'egree of organic attachment 

 existed wheie the spicular rays were in contact, but 1 am 

 quite prepared (o admit that it was not of the same com- 

 plete character as in typical Dictyonine hexactinellids. 

 Prof. F. E. Schulze has clearly shown that a certain degree 

 of irregular coalescence takes place in the body-spicules of 

 undoubted Lyssakine sponges, and now that we know that 

 Protospongia was furnished, like most of the sponges of this 

 group, with anchoring spicules, there is good reason to re- 

 gard this and the allied paleeozoic genera as belonging rather 

 to the Lissakine than to Dictyonine hexactinellids. This 

 is the position assigned to them by Carter and Sollasi. 



Genus Cyathophycus, Walcott. 



The two specimens of Cyathophycus reticulotus, Walcott, 

 — the type species from the Utica shale* — exhibit the 

 structural features so very clearly, that it seems desiiable to 

 refer to the generic characters, as shown in these specimens, 

 before referi-ing to the Mdtis specimens which have been 

 placed in this genus. 



The specimens are, as already described by Sir J. W. 

 Dawson, compressed side by side on the surface of the same 



"^These specimens are from the collection of the late Mr. J. S. 

 Miller, of Ottawa, and their locality is uncertain; but the formation 

 is determined by a Trilobite on the same slab They perfectly 

 resemble specimens from the original locality of Walcott in New 

 York. J.W.D. 



