12 
AUSTRALASIAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 
The canal system is syconoid or perhaps somewhat “ sylleibid 55 with large,, 
glove-finger-shaped chambers; but the preservation is not sufficiently good to afford 
satisfactory details. 
The skeleton arrangement is that of a typical Grantia. The cortical skeleton is 
rather strongly developed on both dermal and gastral surfaces, consisting of several 
layers of tangentially disposed radiates. The gastral surface is abundantly echinated 
by the short, stout, apical rays of the gastral quadriradiates, and the dermal surface by 
the outer portions of the large, crooked oxea, whose inner portions penetrate at right 
angles through the chamber layer, sometimes even to the gastral cortex. The 
articulate tubar skeleton is well developed, consisting of several “ joints,” and the basal 
rays of the subgastral sagittal triradiates may extend through almost the entire 
thickness of the chamber layer. 
The only important respect in which the spiculation (figs. 9a-9d) seems to differ 
from that of the type of the species concerns the form of the large, crooked oxea 
(fig. 9^), whose outer ends are commonly broadly rounded off, or even knobbed (but 
not hastate) at the extremity, a character which seems to occur only in the shoxt 
peristomial oxea of the type. They may be bluntly and asymmetrically pointed, but 
never seem to show the long, slender tapering which characterizes the type. Their 
inner ends, on the other hand, taper very gradually to fine points. 
1 have examined the original preparations of Jenkin s Leucandra cirrata, from 
the Antarctic, now in the British Museum (Natural History), and have come to the 
conclusion that it is not a typical Leucandra but referable rather to the genus Grantia,. 
the flagellate chambers being large and glove-finger-shaped. The large subdermal 
cavities mentioned by Jenkin are probably due, at least partly, to shrinkage. 
Unfortunately I am in considerable doubt, owing to inadequate labelling, as to 
the locality from which the specimens in the “ Aurora ” collection were obtained. They 
reached me in a glass tube containing two labels. One, apparently the original, had 
“ No. 1 ” on one side and “ Porifera ” on the other. This label had a copper or brass 
eyelet ring, the corrosion of which had stained both label and specimens green. The 
second label was evidently of more recent date and bore the words “ Porifera No. II,” 
all on the same side. It seems possible that the “ No. II ” refers to the Station. The 
type of the species was obtained at the Winter Quarters of the “ Discovery ” Expedition.. 
Register Nos., Locality , &c. —IV, 1, 2, 8, 10-14 (some merely fragments). 
? Station II. (lat. S. 66° 55'; long., E. 195° 21'). 
r 
Grantia tenuis Urban [1908, 1909]. 
Some fragmentary specimens of this species were found in the same tube with 
those of Grantia cirrata var. Amorce, with which I at first thought that they were 
specifically identical. They can, however, be distinguished quite readily by the form 
of the large oxea, which are shorter and much less crooked, with the short distal portion 
often separated from the long proximal one by an annular thickening; also by the 
