Sponges of Kaneohe Bay — DE LAUBENFELS 
29 
trastingly colored. In the type of the genus, 
fugax, the yellow shows over more or less 
of the surface, the rest being a dark Prus- 
sian blue. In zeteki the yellow never shows 
and the whole exterior is of one uniform col- 
or. This color in nearly 50 per cent of all 
specimens is a turquoise or robin s-egg blue, 
in as many other specimens it is rosy-red. This 
was the color of the above-mentioned U. S. 
National Museum specimen. After a long 
search, out of scores of specimens, I began 
finding an occasional one that was violet — 
clearly a hybrid of the other two colors. I 
never found a parti-colored colony but always 
the entire sponge of the same hue. The con- 
sistency is spongy. 
The surface of Terpios zeteki is tubercu- 
late, almost like the skin condition called 
"goose pimples.” The elevations are less than 
1 mm. high and about 3 or 4 mm. apart. The 
pores are extremely contractile, and so are 
the oscules, but in life the latter certainly 
open to as much as 2 mm. in diameter. Their 
closure is by a sphinctrate contraction involv- 
ing rather typical muscle cells instead of bv 
the pulling of a membrane across the open- 
ing as in some sponges. This muscular clos- 
ing is quite typical, however, of the order 
Hadromerina, in which this genus belongs. 
The ectosome of this species is very thin, 
not the usual thick cortex of this order; in 
fact, it is usually less than 50 g thick, and 
chiefly organic. The endosome is so densely 
organic as to resemble cheese; the gross 
chambers carry out the similarity. There is 
no segregation of spicule sorts nor any con- 
spicuous tracts. Most of the spicules are in 
confusion but more have their points toward 
the surface than with any other one orienta- 
tion. There are vague ascending tracts, and 
these end in relatively large, very definite 
dermal tufts or brushes; in these tufts the 
spicules bristle, all the points being directed 
toward the surface or slightly divergent. 
The spicules are exclusively tylostyles, of 
great variation in size. Many are about 4 by 
Fig. 13. Terpi?s zeteki, spicules, from a camera 
lucida drawing, X 666. A, the head of one of the 
common spicules, which are tylostyles. The pointed 
end, not shown, is commonplace. B, heads of some 
smaller (juvenile?) tylostyles, which show the 
hexactinellid pattern, c, pointed ends of the spic- 
ules shown at "b”; the mid-reg’ons of them are 
not shown. 
300 g, but 14 by 700 may be expected; many 
are only 2 (or less) by 200 g. An interest 
ing shape is often found in the slender, un- 
finished spicules of this species, especially if 
the whole colony be small and evidently 
young. In such spicules it can be seen that 
the head is not just one single swelling, but 
is due to the existence of four short arms at 
right angles to each other and to the rhabd 
or shaft. Such a spicule could be called an 
orthotetraene; in the Hyalospongiae it is 
called a pentact. These four arms in Terpios 
do not continue to grow; they stop when only 
about 1 g long and are then buried by suc- 
cessive layers of the opaline silica. When the 
mass of the head reaches a diameter of about 
4 or 5 g, the arms are so thoroughly covered 
that they can no longer be observed. The 
genus Terpios was based upon the occurrence 
of these pentactinal spicules; the larger, older 
specimens were put in a later genus Laxosu - 
berites. In a manuscript on the sponge fauna 
of Bermuda I show the synonymy of the two, 
and review the genus Terpios; that manu- 
script may be published before this one. 
The present species was first described as 
Laxosuberites zeteki by de Laubenfels ( 1936: 
