SPONGES OF BEAUFORT (N. C.) HARBOR AND VICINITY. 135 
ASTROMONAXONELLIDA Dendy. 
Family SPIRASTRELLIDZA. 
Megascleres usually styles or tylostyles, sometimes diactinal. Asters of various 
forms occur, often forming an ectosomal crust. 
Spirastrella O. Schmidt. 
Sponge incrusting, or cushion-shaped with processes, or massive; or vase-shaped 
with large cloaca, in which case the incurrent and excurrent surfaces may be differ- 
entiated. Megascleres styles or tylostyles, or a mixture of the two forms. Micro- 
scleres usually present, and abundant, in the form of spirasters, but these spicules may be 
exceedingly scarce, or even wanting. 
Spirastrella andrewsii, n. sp. (Pl. LVI, figs. 3, 6, 7a, b; Pl. LXVI, fig. 49a, 6, c, d.) 
A specimen was trawled August r, 1914, in 15 fathoms of water by the Fish Hawk on the “ Fishing 
Bank’’ off Beaufort Inlet, Fish Hawk station 8199. Since 1914 the Fish Hawk has taken in her summer 
dredgings several very similar specimens in the same locality. Several specimens of the species, now 
in the National Museum at Washington, were taken by the A/batross off the Carolina coast at a depth 
of about 30 fathoms during the summer of 1885. The species has also been taken in Jamaican waters 
by Prof. E. A. Andrews. 
The striking characteristic features of the sponge are its large size, habitus, and the differentiation 
of incurrent and excurrent surfaces. The sponge is cylindrical, with large cloacal cavity. Living 
specimens occur that are high and vaselike. The dried specimens, which, doubtless, have all col- 
lapsed more or less, are comparatively low and cushionlike. The external surface of the sponge ig 
incurrent, the cloacal surface excurrent. 
The following description is based on the specimen taken in 1914. The sponge is cushion-shaped, 
60 centimeters across and 30 centimeters high; cloacal cavity 30 centimeters across at the mouth, 20 
centimeters deep. The color is dark brown at the surface, lighter within. Consistency in an alcoholic 
specimen is like firm, dense cartilage, sponge becoming woody on drying. Whole sponge is greatly 
excavated by canals which contain many shrimp. The lateral surface is closely studded with small 
incurrent apertures (fig. 75), which measure 1 to 2 millimeters in diameter. The upper surface around 
the mouth of the cloaca shows irregular areas of similar apertures. They are all actual openings, not 
closed by pore membranes. Beneath the ectosome of the lateral and upper surfaces the sponge is 
cavernous, with large canals 6 to 8 millimeters wide, or even larger, extending more or less radially 
into the interior. Several incurrent appertures, perforating the ectosome, lead into each canal. On 
the walls of these great canals are abundant apertures leading into surrounding small canals. 
The external surface of the sponge between the incurrent apertures appears to the eye compara- 
tively aporous. It is, however, dotted with abundant small,round subdermal cavities, for the most 
part 200 to 300 » in diameter, but as small as 80 » in diameter. The thin, dermal membrane covering 
these cavities is perforated by pores 4o to 50 » in diameter, one to a few (about 3 to 4) pores leading 
into each cavity. The membrane roofing in a subdermal cavity contains spirasters, but is free from 
megascleres, excepting such as project into it from the surrounding tissue. The subdermal cavities 
are produced into small canals which pass inward, as may best be seen in a series of thick tangential 
sections. 
The anatomy suggests that the large incurrent canals serve to carry water directly into the deeper 
interior of the sponge, while the external region is fed by small canals, some of which arise as branches 
of the larger and others of which arise between the incurrent apertures, as just described. It is needless 
to say that observations on the living sponge in this connection are desirable. 
The cloacal wall is studded with oscula, 4 to 5 millimeters in diameter and smaller, although the 
smaller sizes are obviously often due to partial closure (fig. 72). Oscula are numerous, the distance 
between fully open ones being less than the oscular diameter. Each osculum, which, with its surround- 
ing rim of “‘oscular membrane,’ forms a circular depressed area in the dried sponge, is the aperture of 
