New Species of Sponges. C08 
whether they were cemented together by silica at the 
points where their rays are in contact. Professor Sollas, 
in an able paper on the structure and affinities of the genus 
(Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., Vol. 30, p. 366), asserts ‘that 
they are separate, and not united either by envelopment in 
a common coating or by ankylosis,” whereas it has seemed 
to me that a certain degree of organic union must have 
existed to have allowed even the partial preservation of the 
mesh-work of the body-wall in the fossil state, and I have 
regarded the delicate film of pyrites which extends over 
the mesh-work in many specimens, as indicating a connect- 
ed spicular membrane which served to hold the larger 
spicules in position. From the study of the Quebec speci- 
mens [ still think a certain degree of organic attachment 
existed where the spicular rays were in contact, but I am 
quite prepared to admit that it was not of the same com- 
plete character as in typical Dictyonine hexactinellids. 
Prof. F. E. Schulze has clearly shown that a certain degree 
of irregular coalescence takes place in the body-spicules of 
undoubted Lyssakine sponges, and now that we know that 
Protospongia was furnished, like most of the sponges of this 
group, with anchoring spicules, there is good reason to re- 
gard this and the allied paleozoic genera as belonging rather 
to the Lissakine than to Dictyonine hexactinellids. This 
is the position assigned to them by Carter and Sollas. 
Genus Cyatrnopnycus, Walcott. 
The two specimens of Cyathophycus reticulatus, Walcott, 
—the type species from the Utica shale*—exhibit the 
structural features so very clearly, that it seems desirable to 
refer to the generic characters, as shown in these specimens, 
before referring to the Métis specimens which have been 
placed in this genus. 
The specimens are, as already described by Sir J. W. 
Dawson, compressed side by side on the surface of the same 
*These specimens are from the collection of the late Mr. J. 8. 
Miller, of Ottawa, and their locality is uncertain; but the formation 
is determined by a Trilobite on thesameslab They perfectly 
resemble specimens from the original locality of Walcott in New 
York. J.W.D. 
5 
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