Page:Scientific results HMS Challenger vol 18 part 1.djvu/492

284 which are three-sided prismatic; their outer free distal end only as long as the diameter of the inner medullary shell.

Dimensions.—Diameter of the spongy shell 0.25, of its inner cavity 0.2, outer medullary shell 0.1, inner 0.05.

Habitat.—Cosmopolitan; Mediterranean, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, surface from many Stations.

2. Rhizosphæra serrata, n. sp. (Pl. 18, figs. 5-7).

Central cavity of the spongy shell five times as broad as the diameter of the outer medullary shell. Bars of all three shells of the same breadth as the forty to sixty (or more) thin radial beams between them. These are three-sided prismatic, with denticulate edges, scarcely half as broad as their outer prolongations, which are half as long as the shell radius, and possess three spirally contorted serrated edges. (The figured specimen is a young one; in the older specimens the spongy framework of the cortical shell is much more developed.)

Dimensions.—Diameter of the spongy shell 0.3, of its central cavity 0.22, outer medullary shell 0.06, inner 0.02.

Habitat.—Central Pacific, Stations 270 to 274, surface.

3. Rhizosphæra leptomita, Haeckel.

Rhizosphæra leptomita, Haeckel, 1862, Monogr. d. Radiol., p. 453, Taf. xxv. figs. 8-10.

Central cavity of the spongy cortical shell twice as broad as the diameter of the outer medullary shell; bars of both very thin, only one-third as broad as the bars of the inner medullary shell. Radial spines thirty to fifty (or more), curved, three-sided prismatic; inside the spongy shell as thin as their bars, outside three times as broad.

Dimensions.—Diameter of the spongy shell 0.27, of its inner cavity 0.2, outer medullary shell 0.1, inner 0.05.

Habitat.—Mediterranean (Messina); Atlantic, Stations 348 to 354, surface. 



Definition.— with an ellipsoidal or cylindrical central capsule, prolonged into one axis (sometimes articulate by annular transverse strictures); with an ellipsoidal or cylindrical, fenestrated siliceous shell (often articulate by annular strictures), invariably prolonged into one axis. Fundamental form monaxon, usually with the poles of the prolonged dimensive main axis equal.

The suborder comprises those  in which the fenestrated spherical shell appears prolonged into one axis. The geometric fundamental form of the shell, which in the was a sphere, in this case therefore becomes an ellipsoid, and whilst in the former all axes originally have the same value (Homaxonia),