_Spicules._ Skeleton-spicules short, slender, blunt, more or less
regularly and strongly spiny, straight or feebly curved. No
flesh-spicules. Gemmule-spicules with the rotulæ circular, very wide as
compared with the shaft, concave on the surface, with the shaft
projecting as an umbo on the surface; the lower rotula often a little
larger than the upper.
_Gemmules_ numerous, situated at the base of the sponge in irregular,
one-layered patches, small (0.32 × 0.264 mm.), of a brilliant golden
colour, distinctly wider than high, with a single aperture situated on
an eminence on the apex, each clothed (when mature) with a pneumatic
coat that contains relatively large but irregular air-spaces among which
the spicules stand with the rotulæ overlapping alternately, a
funnel-shaped pit in the coat descending from the surface to the upper
rotula of each of them; the surface of the gemmule covered with
irregular projections.
Diameter of gemmule 0.32 × 0.264 mm.
Length of skeleton-spicule 0.177 "
Length of gemmule-spicule 0.015 "
Diameter of rotule 0.022 "
This species appears to be related to _T. pennsylvanica_, from which it
differs mainly in the form of its gemmule-spicules and the structure of
its gemmule. My original description was based on specimens in which the
gemmule-spicules were not quite mature.
TYPE in the Indian Museum.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.--Lower Bengal and Lower Burma.
_Localities_:--BENGAL, Calcutta (_Annandale_): BURMA, jungle pool near
Kawkareik, Amherst district, Tenasserim (_Annandale_).
BIOLOGY.--This species covers a brick wall at the edge of the Museum
tank in Calcutta every year during the "rains." In the cold weather the
wall is left dry, but it is usually submerged to a depth of several feet
before the middle of July. It is then rapidly covered by a thin layer of
the sponge, which dies down as soon as the water begins to sink when the
"rains" are over. For some months the gemmules adhere to the wall on
account of the cage of spicules in which each of them is enclosed, but
long before the water rises again the cages disintegrate and the
gemmules are set free. Many of them fall or are carried by the wind into
the water, on the surface of which, owing to their thick pneumatic coat,
they float buoyantly. Others are lodged in cavities in the wall. On the
water the force of gravity attracts them to one another and to the edge
of the pond, and as the water rises they are carried against the wall
and germinate. In thick jungle at the base of the Dawna Hills near
Kawkareik[AI] in the interior of Tenasserim, I found the leaves of
shrubs which grew round a small pool, covered with little dry patches of
the sponge, which had evidently grown upon them when the bushes were
submerged. This was in March, during an unusually severe drought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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