Sponges from South Australia. 349 



which a group might be created under the name of " Leuco- 

 phlcBina " — each of which has been adoisedly selected as re- 

 spectively typical of some of the groups which it has appeared 

 to me, after mj experience with the specimens in the British 

 Museum, to be most desirable to record at once, or as soon as 

 I had the time. Doubtless there are many others, but non 

 possumus. 



Looking over my notes and sketches of Multiformia in the 

 British Museum when my Classification was made (for I still 

 possess the MS. volumes in which illustrated descriptions of 

 all the species and most of the specimens in the collection 

 were recorded) , I find that by far the greater part are branched 

 and stipitate, some flabelliform, a few vasiform, and still fewer 

 massive. The branched forms, again, may be shrubby with 

 the branches cylindrical, dichotomously divided, and smooth 

 like those of Axinella verrucosa, in which they very much 

 resemble a digitate Ghalina j or they may be cylindrical and 

 ragged, i. e. proliferously processed all round as in Ftllo- 

 caulis gracilis ] or rough and shaggy as in Phyoopsis hirsuta ; 

 or the caulescent branches may be compressed and arranged 

 side by side flabelliformly, that is dichotomously dividing on 

 the same plane, when, by interuniting and throwing out a 

 thorny growth from the surface on both sides, with sarcode 

 tympanizing the intervals, the Acanthelline form may be pro- 

 duced, or by growing together erect and laterally united into 

 a group massively, they may assume the form of Leucophloeus 

 massalis. But, as L have before stated, there appears to me 

 to be no limit to the varieties of form which the sponges in 

 every order may assume, and the same forms in every order 

 which, so long as they were indiscriminately mixed together 

 under the universal name " Spongia," as in Lamarck's 

 ' Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vert^bres,' was com- 

 paratively an easy matter ; but since a minute examination of 

 their structure and spiculation under the microscope has neces- 

 sitated their separation by an almost individual nomenclature, 

 that which was an " easy matter " under a universal term 

 has become most perplexing. Hence, as one series of forms 

 does for the whole class, I have-given a tabulated view of these 

 in the ' Annals ' of 1875 (vol. xvi. p. 7, pi. iii.), to which 

 I must refer the reader for further information on this subject. 



As regards the last group of the Axinellidse, viz. the 

 Durissima, I can state no more than at the time I made it, 

 which I did chiefly for such species as had a very rigid skele- 

 ton, in which the fibre was very thick and the dried sarcode 

 hung about it, more or less tympanizing the interstices of the 



Ann. da Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. xvi. 24 



