222 DR. J. MURIE ON STEERE'S SPONGE, 



arborescent outline than that now represented (its dendritic characters suggesting the 

 generic term), but I have preferred abiding by the photograph rather than adding branches 

 where fractured portions indicate their former presence. 



Dimensions of sponges are so exceedingly variable that this character is only of very 

 subsidiary importance. Withal in the original description of a type full mastery of detail 

 is needful, for one never knows on what trivial peculiarities important issues may after- 

 wards be raised. Admeasurements in the present instance can be but rough approxi- 

 mations and not mathematical verities. On comparing the great Askonema of the 

 Portugal coast with its relatively diminutive representative Crateromorpha of the 

 Philippines, Carter*, in his excellent commentary on the group, says : — " In short, like 

 most things in the west, if the Hexactinellidse do not surpass in beauty, they do in size, 

 for the most part, those of the east." Steere's sponge, however, has an area equalling 

 the large vase-like Askonema, its branched character, though, differing widely. 



Its greatest vertical height is 81 inches ; from tip to tip of the most distant upper 

 branches is a trifle over 28 inches. Some 8 or 9 inches may be allowed for the length of 

 the broad lower, trifid stem portion ; and the several longer branches vary, three measured 

 being respectively 16, 20, and 23 inches in their entire length. Taken by compasses, the 

 breadth quite at the flattish base, or ,what for convenience' sake may be termed the root, 

 is fully 5^ inches, but the same in the opposite diameter or thickness is barely more than 

 If inch. Higher up and just below the broken middle main branch the stem lessens in 

 breadth to 3 inches across. The girth taken round each of the three so-called short main 

 branches, where about to divide into their numerous long upper branches, is from 4| to 

 5 inches. The long whorled branches have a circumference, at what further on will be 

 explained as the frills, of from 3 to 3^ inches, that is, a diameter of about an inch ; the 

 grooved portion intervening between the whorls, however, very little exceeds half that 

 diameter. 



In allusion to the superficial aspect as it looks to the eye and under a hand-lens, the 

 way in which the specimen has been tossed and carried about should not be forgotten. 

 Whilst many of the top twigs and branches here and there have wonderfully escaped 

 injury, and the surface can be made out in detail with tolerable accuracy, other portions 

 are greatly abraded, and particularly so the stem part. The latter seems to have been 

 covered by a dermal membrane, now almost entirely rubbed off, at spots only a kind of 

 fluffy residue proving its former presence. But the abrasion notwithstanding eliminates 

 other features, especially the marked nature of the pores and oscula as connected with 

 the internal tubular and canal system. The inferior cracked and fractured pieces also 

 clearly point out that the said root- and stem-spicules are to a certain extent stronger and 

 more solid than those higher up. 



The colour of the entire siliceous skeleton save lower parts is frosty white, not quite so 

 lustrous and pearly as is the " glass rope " oiHyalonema, nor so dull as Dactylocalyx ; but 

 yet the marginal spicules are translucent, and in spots, or under certain lights, some parts 

 are more brilliant than others. The lower stem and so-called root is as a whole to the 

 eye of a browner tint, its spicular meshwork with a pale yellowish hue. But this coloration 

 * Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (4) 1873, vol. xii. p. 369. 



