PLATE CLXVI. 



A species of the sponge tribe of rare occurrence, and of which the 

 habitat is apparently not very precisely known. The example repre- 

 sented in the annexed plate, we found among the Spongia?, in the 

 collection of the late Mr. George Humphreys, without any reference 

 to its native country. There is in the great work of Seba> plate 97? 

 fig. 2, a kind of sponge which we suspect may be a variety of the 

 present species : it resembles it in having tubular branches with the 

 openings terminal and somewhat triangular, and furthermore, we 

 conclude, from the appearance of the figure, in the truncated mouth ; 

 but it is smaller, the branches more regular, longer and more dis- 

 tinctly fastigiate or rising to an equal height. The correspondence 

 is however so near, that we conceive it may be a smaller growth of 

 the present species, and if so, it is presumed to be the kind denomi- 

 nated by Pallas, S. Fastigiata, or a species nearly approximate. 



Now that we are speaking of the Spongia fastigiata of Pallas, it 

 may not be amiss to observe, that Professor Gmelin has placed this 

 Pallasian species as a variety of Spongia tubulosa, a kind with which we 

 can by no means reconcile it, the S. tubulosa having the tips of the 

 branches somewhat attenuated or pointed, as described and figured 

 by Ellis and Solander, the very reverse of which, as it was before 

 observed, is obvious in the species now before us ; the openings in 

 this kind, instead of being pointed or inclining to that form, are 

 broad and somewhat expanded, and the truncated margin of the 

 aperture so distinctly characteristic, that the casual observer might 

 be readily inclined to conceive they had been cut with a knife or other 

 similar instrument, and that consequently this truncation must be the 

 work of art instead of nature; that it is the true character of its 



