268 Repoet. of the State Geologist. 



from casts of spicules in a phosphatic nodule coming from the 

 Shaly limestone. For more than four years Professor C. E. 

 Beecher has had in his possession such nodules, free spicules, and 

 sections of an entire specimen from the same horizon. 



It has been the custom to place in Hyalostelia dissociated hex- 

 actinellid spicules of various forms. The type of this genus is 

 Hyalonema Smithi, Young and Young,* from the Carboniferous 

 strata of England. The spicules described by these writers are 

 of three kinds, " {a) nail-like, some with four tapering generally 

 unequal arms, a fifth projecting at right angles to these, others 

 approaching the sexradiate type by the projection of a rounded, 

 sometimes stalked process, opposite to the fifth ; (5) sexradiate, 

 with the arms of various sizes but always projecting, and of vari- 

 ous number, either by reduction or by the adhesion of other 

 spicules; {c) long, smooth, slender, tubular rods (the Serpula 

 ^araZZ6Z(2, M'Coy) tapering toward the extremity and ending in 

 the anchoring booklets, the tip of the rod being either not, or 

 only slightly inflated." 



The spicules thus enumerated and described were referred by 

 the writers to the existing Lyssacine hexj^ctinellid, Hyalonema. 

 In 18Y9, two years later, ZiTTELf recognized Hyalonema Smithi 

 as a distinct form and proposed for it the name Hyalostelia. In 

 18S3 Hindi:}: proposed to limit the type species " to the simple 

 hexactinellid spicules, which are the most abundant forms in the 

 beds at Cunningham Baidland, and to the spicular rods with or 

 without four anchoring hooks at their termination." The abnor- 

 mal spicules were shown to- belong to a form, subsequently 

 described by Caktee as Holasterella conferia. 



The form of the sponge in Hyalostelia and the range of its 

 spicular elements are unknown. The fundamental conception of 

 the species by Young and Young seems to have been its stalked 

 condition wherein it resembles Hyalonema. The Lower Helder- 

 berg species here discussed is from a widely different horizon. 

 Since, moreover, there is no evidence that it once possessed 

 anchoring spicules, it seems impossible to refer it to Hyalostelia. 



* Young and Young, 1877. Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (4), vol. XX, pp. 425-432, Pis. XIV and XV. Referred 

 to bj' the same writers in 1876 as Acanthosjwngia Smithi, Y. and Y. Cat. of "West. Scot. Foss. 

 tZiTTEL, 1879. Handbuch der Palseontologie, Bd. 1, II, Lief. 

 *HiNDE, 1883, Cat. Foss. Sponges of Brit. Mus. p. 150. 



