154 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
Phoriospongia Marshall, emend. 
[With the characters of the subfamily.] 
Phoriospongia, Marshall, 1880. 
Chondropsis (Sigmatella Lendenfeld), Dendy, 1894. 
Psammochela, Dendy, 1916. 
Phoriospongia osburnensis, n. sp. (PI. LXI, figs. 24, 25; Pl. LXVI, fig. 60a, 5, c.) 
A single specimen (Pl. LXI, fig. 24) taken on the “Fishing Bank’’ off Beaufort Inlet by Dr. R. C. 
Osburn at a depth of 13 fathoms. 
Sponge forms a thin incrustation over an alcyonarian coral. It is for the most part about 1 milli- 
meter thick, thinner in places, and twice that thickness in some spots. 
Color whitish in alcohol, on the salmon-pink alcyonarian. Oral ends of the alcyonarian polyps in 
general free of the incrustation. Loxosoma is scattered in abundance over the surface of the sponge. 
Surface fairly smooth. Pores 50 to 80 in diameter, abundantly scattered over the dermal mem- 
brane, which is quite riddled with them in many places, probably everywhere when they are open. 
Small, rounded subdermal cavities, mostly 125 to 250 wide, are very abundant and give to the sur- 
face of the sponge, when examined with a lens, a porous appearance. Oscula uncertain; probably 
small and scattered, and now closed. Many canals, the largest about 200u wide, excavate the paren- 
chyma, some passing radially through the incrustation from the surface almost to the base. Flagellated 
chambers uncertain. Abundant, small, compact cellular masses, doubtless embryos, occur in the paren- 
chyma. 
Spicules (P1. LXVI, fig. 60a, b,c). —Megascleres: (1) Strongyles, subcylindrical with bluntly rounded 
ends, slender, smooth; about straight or slightly curved; 160 to 180% by 2 to 34. Microscleres: (2) 
Sigmata, 10 to 20 uw long; the common and characteristic length, 14 to 164. Abundant in dermal mem- 
brane; scantily present in the interior, canal walls, and parenchyma. (3) Isochele, 12 to 16 long; 
very scantily present in dermal membrane and interior, The axis is distinctly curved and the spicule 
is tridentate, the toothed end about one-fourth the total length. The teeth appear, under a good 
immersion objective, elongate-conical, but the small size of the spicule makes minute details some- 
what uncertain. The spicule probably falls in the Levinsen-Lundbeck (Lundbeck, 1905, p. 2) class of 
chele arcuatz; that is, there is at each end only one tooth proper, the lateral “‘teeth’’ being the ale, 
which are separated by deep bays from the shaft. These spicules were at first overlooked in the sponge, 
but after their discovery search revealed a few in every preparation. 
Skeletal framework (P1. LXI, fig. 25).—There is no reticulum. Instead, simple, unbranched, skeletal 
fibers pass more or less radially from the base of the sponge to the surface (fig. 25). They often curve 
a good deal, and the precise direction of the fiber frequently corresponds with that of an adjacent large 
canal; obviously a case of correlation. The fibers are made up of sand grains, with which some bits of 
foraminifer shells or pieces of foreign sponge spicules are intermingled, proper spicules (strongyles) of 
the sponge, and spongin. 
The sand grains of the fiber and bits of shell, etc., are frequently but not always arranged in a single 
series. The grains may be all small, or here and there a much larger one is intercalated. Covering 
them sparingly are strongyles, arranged more or less lengthwise in the fiber. There are short parts of 
many fibers in which no sand grains are present; these are composed of compact tracts of longitudinally 
placed strongyles. The spongin of the fiber is scanty. Yet there is enough not only to connect but to 
form a thin covering over the mineral elements of the fiber. It is very transparent and easily overlooked. 
The skeletal fibers in the ectosomal region are frequently made up chiefly of proper spicules, stron- 
gyles, which at the surface project slightly, often diverging. Beside these radial or obliquely radial 
bunches, free megascleres occur here and there in the ectosome, inclined more or less radially to the 
surface. The skeletal fibers, owing to their composition, vary greatly in thickness, even within the 
same fiber. Parts of fibers may be only 20 thick, other parts 160 thick. The fibers are abundant, 
frequently 175 to 350 u apart. Between the skeletal fibers there are, in the body of the sponge, some 
scattered megascleres. 
The dermal membrane contains a good many strongyles lying tangentially, scattered singly or in 
wisps; also the projecting tufts of spicules, above referred to, which represent the upper ends of skeletal 
fibers. Flat preparations seem sometimes to show skeletal fibers running tangentially in the dermal 
membrane. But sections prove there are no such fibers, and that the appearance is caused by fibers 
which run from base to surface as usual, but very obliquely and in regions where the sponge is quite thin. 
