112 BRITISH SPONGES: 



blauce to a dark putrid sponge, but on immersing it in water, I 

 found it still in a high state of vitality. Its surface was smooth, 

 convex, fleshy and transparent. Its pores required a lens to be 

 distinctly seen, and its fecal orifices were few, very large, regu- 

 larly circular, and lay rather deeper than the general surface. 

 Its spicula were remarkably uniform in size, rather small, curv- 

 ed, equally thick thi'oughout, pointed suddenly at both ends, and 

 silicious." 



14. H. FucoRUM, amorphous, the texture fihro-cellular, 

 friable tchen dried; spicula rather short, slightly curved, 

 more acutely pointed at one extremity than at the other. 



Plate IX. and Plate XII, Fig. 2. 



Spongia Fucorum, Esper, Spong. tab. 49, fig. 1, 2. 



Spongia parasitica, Montagu in Wern. Mem. ii. 114. Gray, Brit. 



PI. i. 360. Grant in Edin. New Phil. Journ. i. 348. 

 Halichondria parasitica, Flem. Brit. Anim. 521. Thomson in Ann. 



Nat. Hist. V. 254. Bellavufs South Devon, 268. 

 Halispongia parasitica, Blainv. Actinol. 532. 



Hah. " Investing fuci and corallines, not uncommon," Flem- 

 ing. " Frequent on Sertularias, sometimes following the course 

 of the branches individually, which it envelopes ; at other times 

 spreading laterallj', and uniting the branches together, becoming 

 an miformed mass : the texture is rather coarse, and the fibres 

 fimbriated. Sometimes in large masses at the base of Sertularia 

 antennina, and other vesicular corallines," Montagu. Near 

 Hartlepool, Durham, J. Hogg. I have specimens from the 

 western shores of England and Scotland ; and from the number 

 of specimens communicated to me, from various localities, by Mr 

 W. Tliompson, it appears to be common on the Irish coasts. 



Sponge of no specific shape, fibrous, reticulated, homogeneous, 

 of a greyish-white or yellowish-brown colour, inelastic, either 



