CANAL SYSTEM.—With a few exceptions the representatives of the Demospongiae may be said to have taken up the evolution of the canal system at the stage where it was left in _Leucandra aspera_—a stage which the ancestral Demosponges must have reached quite independently of the Calcarea. These commoner members are thus already gifted with the advantages pertaining to a spherical form of ciliated chamber, and so, too, is the Rhagon (Fig. 105), an immature stage noteworthy as the simplest form of Demosponge, and thus the starting-point for the higher types of canal system. The exceptions above alluded to are not without interest: they are the Dendroceratina, of doubtful affinities, (p. 220), which possess small tubular Syconate chambers. They may be regarded either as of independent origin from other Demospongiae, thus making the group polyphyletic, or more simply as representing the ancestral condition, and in this case we must look on the possession of spherical chambers by the Rhagon as a secondary feature. Occupying as it does the important position above indicated, the Rhagon merits a brief description. It is a small discoid or hemispherical body attached by a flat base. It contains a central paragaster, with a single osculum at the free end. Into the paragaster open directly a {210}few spherical flagellated chambers, which lie in the lateral walls of the body. The basal wall of the paragaster, the parts of its lateral walls between the openings of neighbouring chambers, and the entire outer surface of the body are covered with pinacocytes. It is convenient to call the basal part of the sponge from which chambers are absent the hypophare, the upper chamber-bearing part the spongophare. In some of the deeper dermal cells spicules may be already present. In the Rhagon, then, the canal system is of the second type, but all the adult Demosponges have advanced to the third type, and the further evolution in this system is in the direction of improving the mode of communication of the chambers with the canal system. The changes involved go hand in hand with increasing bulk of the dermal layer. A glance at the accompanying figures will show at once the connexion between the phenomena. The increase in the dermal layer (1) greatly reduces the extent of the lumen of the excurrent canals; and (2) results in the intervention of a narrow tube or aphodus between the mouth of each chamber and the excurrent canal. The chamber system is then converted from an "eurypylous" to an "aphodal" type. When the incurrent canal also opens into the chamber by way of narrow tubes, one proper to each chamber and termed "prosodus," the canal system is of the "diplodal" type. [Illustration: FIG. 104.—Diagram of (A) eurypylous and (B) aphodal canal systems. _a_, Apopyle; _a'_, aphodus; _E_, excurrent canal; _I_, incurrent canal; _p_, prosopyle; _p'_, short prosodus. (After Sollas.)]