164 On the Sponge-fauna of Madras. 



The skeleton is excessively coarse, loose, and irregular ; in 

 many places it seems to consist only of a rough network of 

 foreign bodies, including spicules of all shapes and sizes, 

 cemented together by spongin, while sometimes longer or 

 shorter stretches of pale-coloured fibre occur, containing no 

 foreign bodies at all. The filaments are abundant, forming 

 tangled masses. 



There is in the collection of the British Museum a specimen 

 from Ceylon, which I have already had occasion to refer to, 

 and which belongs to the same species as the Madras speci- 

 men. It was collected by Mr. E. W. H. Holdsworth, and is 

 labelled in Dr. Bowerbank's handwriting " Stematumema." 

 It is obviously one of the two specimens referred to by him, 

 in his " Report on a Collection of Sponges found at Ceylon 

 by E. W. H. Holdsworth, Esq." *, under that name; but he 

 appears to have considered these two specimens unworthy 

 of description. 



Dr. von Lendenfeld, in working over the British Museum 

 collection of horny sponges for his forthcoming monograph 

 of the group, has given the manuscript name ''^Hircinia 

 vaUata''^ to the species in question, a name to which I of course 

 adhere. 



Genus Hippospongia, Schulze. 



There are in the collection two fair-sized specimens, evi- 

 dently both belonging to the same species. They are massive 

 and give off from the upper surface hollow digitate processes. 

 One specimen, which has evidently been dredged in the living 

 condition, has the skin still attached and shrunk on to the 

 skeleton ; this gives to the surface a uniform black colour. 

 The other specimen is only a washed-out skeleton, and is of 

 a dirty greyish-yellow colour. The primary lines of the 

 skeleton are densely cored by foreign spicules, and the inter- 

 spaces between them are filled with an angularly-meshed 

 network of horny fibre, containing no foreign bodies and 

 averaging in diameter about 0'007 millim. 



In the almost hopeless state of confusion at present existing 

 with regard to the classification and nomenclature of the 

 horny sponges, I shall not attempt to attach a definite specific 

 name to these two specimens. Suffice it to say that they 

 closely resemble von Lendenfeld's Euspongia canaliculata f, 



* Proc. Zool. Soc. 1873, p. 25. 



t " A Monograph of the Australian Sponges," Proc. Linn. Soc. New 

 South Wales, vol. x. p. 502. 



