286 Mr. H. J. Carter 07i 



mencement or at the extremities ; then expanded and united, 

 generally into a flal;ellate more or less proliferous plane ; 

 lastly, jagged or irregularly moniliform ; while the vents may 

 he comparatively small and linearly arranged opposite to each 

 otlier on the cylindrical branch in the typical species, scattered 

 in tlie compressed forms, and projected pustulitbrmly in 

 the oculate specimens. The colour may vary from light 

 sponge-yellow to dark sponge-brown, more or less mixed with 

 red, and often to reddish purple ; but, of course, this is useless 

 for specific distinction. 



Fam. 3. Cavoclialiiiida. 

 " Tubular, vasiform, aculeated, patulous or compressed 

 flabellately ; plane and frondose or dactyloid." 



Groups. TUBULODIGITATA. 



Patuloscula procumlens^ Carter (' Annals,' 1882, vol. ix. 



p. 365). 



Short, thick, thumb- shaped, cylindrical, bullate, hollow, 

 erect processes, growing side by side on a common expanded 

 base, spreading in a branched form horizontally. Consistence 

 resilient. Colour, when fresh, " purple-slate," now sponge- 

 yellow brown. Vent terminal, cloacal, circular at the end of 

 the process, contracted, but still enormously large. Spicule 

 acerate, as before. Size of specimens, of which there are two, 

 varying from 2 to 6 in. high, and 6x4 horizontally. 



Depth 7 to 14 fath. 



Ohs. This is also a West-Indian sponge and appears to 

 have been noticed and illustrated by De Fonbressin and 

 Michelotti under the name of " Callyspongia hullata " 

 (' Spongiaires de la mer Caraibe,' Harlem, 1864, p. 5Q^ pi. x. 

 fig. 5) . I have already given the name to some beautiful 

 specimens of it, brought home from the West Indies by the 

 Rev. H. H. Higgins, now in the Liverpool Museum, in one 

 of which the bullate processes, successively inflated, are ex- 

 tended upwards separately for 3 or 4 inches. A specimen of 

 these was also presented to the British Museum in the month 

 of March 1877. It is not the Spongia hullata of Lamarck 

 = ^p. tubulosa, Esper, tab. 54, since the vents here are ciliated, 

 as 1). et M. have noticed, which allies it to their genus 

 " Tuha,^^ that is typical of our groups Aculeata &c. (see 

 my "Classification," I. c. "Key," p. 394; and for the 

 genus " Tuha,'' generally, ' Annals,' 1882, vol. ix. p. 277 

 et sen J West Indian and Acapulco sponges). 



Patuloscula procumbens, Yax. flabelliformis. 

 In this variety the successively dilated bullate tubes or 



