Henry Hadlow

“ We also sometimes meet with portions of the glass coil most ingeniously attached to and grouped with corals, shells and other marine products, which I need only refer to to remind you that such arrangements are entirely artificial, notwithstanding that they are often so artistically done as to have a most deceptively natural appearance, and that the way in which the coil is placed, with the free ends of the plume upward, has had, I imagine, considerable influence in persuading people that that was its ordinary mode of growth. ”

“ Towards each extremity of a fibre the number of layers is fewer and the fibre consequently tapers off, and as the fibres themselves do not extend the whole length of the coil, this likewise tapers off in the end which is attached to the sponge, and appears there to be tough and fibrous and securely attached to the spicules and network forming the skeleton of the sponge mass. ”

“ Professor Percival Wright was successful in finding specimens, some living, and some of large size, and has shown us that our original opinions were founded in mistake, and that so far from the sponge being the fixed mass it is the glass rope which dips deeply into the mud or sand and forms a kind of anchor for the sponge head, probably being secreted by it for that purpose, and that it is not a mere growth attached parasitically to the sponge, but an essential part of its constitution. ”

“ If we put a few particles of the polythoa, or some fragments gently torn from the inner surface of the sponge, into strong nitric acid for a day or two, the animal and extraneous matter will dissolve away, and the silicious particles, including the spicules, will alone remain. ”

“ Such are the general characteristics of living sponge; the skeleton which we see in dried specimens is, in the ordinary sponge of every day life, composed of horny material in form of tubes, in composition resembling animal matter, and of a softness and elasticity which gives it its domestic value. ”

“ Also the living sponge presents an aquiferous system, consisting of a series of anastomosing channels passing through its mass, through which currents of water are constantly passing, entering by the minuter orifices or pores, and escaping from the larger openings or oscula, in this way bearing floating nutritive material to the fixed sarcode matter and at the same time aerating the whole animal. ”

“ I have, not, however, heard of its appearance yet, and in the mean time, there are many points of interest and many structures of great beauty which we can discover for ourselves with a little expenditure of time and patience. ”

“ The sponge mass of the Hyalonema is perhaps most commonly cup shaped, with the glass rope attached to its inner concave surface. Sometimes it is more or less globular, with the glass rope running through it and attached to nearly the whole length of the long axis. As you see in the specimen before you, it is sometimes of considerable size, eight or nine inches in its longest diameter. ”

“ There are many other forms of spicules to reward the painstaking microscopist who searches for them, some of them minute and requiring the higher powers of the instrument and careful examination of the lighter washings, but the most beautiful and distinctive are those which we have seen and which can be easily demonstrated with the most ordinary microscope. ”