Sponge

“ We gathered one or two, but the sponge in its natural state is not an agreeable object. It is like a mass of slimy india-rubber, and has to "die" and rot out its animal life, which it does with a protesting perfume of great power, the sponge of our bath-tubs being the macerated skeleton of the once living sponge.
[Pg 147] We had hoped to reach our camp, out on the other side of the island, that evening, but that dodging the shoals and sticking in the mud had considerably delayed us. Besides, though Charlie and the captain both hated to admit it, we had lost our way. ”

“ When we first capture a live sponge from the sea it has a slimy, dirty appearance, and is very heavy. The sponge is found to be filled with a glutinous substance that is the fleshy part of the animal. It is very soft and jelly-like, and after the sponge is dead it is readily squeezed out, by a process which is called "taking the milk out," which leaves simply the skeleton, the only useful part as an article of commerce. ”

“ Burnt sponge (SPONGIA USTA—Ph. D.) is prepared by heating the cuttings and unsaleable pieces in a closed iron crucible until they become black and friable, avoiding too much heat, and allowing the whole to cool before exposing it to the air. It was formerly in great repute in bronchocele and scrofulous complaints.—Dose, 1 to 3 dr., in water, or made into an electuary or lozenges. When good burnt sponge evolves violet fumes of iodine on being heated in a flask along with sulphuric acid. ”

“ The water also carries air, and the sponge gets its oxygen out of it. You see, the sponge like the fish, must breathe under water.While the sponge is like an animal, in eating other little animals and plants, it is like a vegetable in that it cannot move around. It is rooted to one spot. The sponges grow so thickly that they often make perfect forests on the rocks, on the bottom of the sea. When the sponge is taken from the water it is covered with what seems to be a mass of jelly. This is its flesh, and the flesh is made up of the little cells with tails that I have been telling you about. ”

“ The sponge is exceedingly porous and readily absorbs water or any fluid by the well-known process of capillary attraction. The sponge fiber is very tough and is not like anything known to exist in the vegetable kingdom. The substance analyzes almost the same as ordinary silk, which all know is an animal [Pg 169] product. If we burn a piece of sponge it exhibits very much the same phenomena as the burning of hair or wool, and the smell is very much the same.
The structure of a piece of sponge when examined under a microscope is a wonderfully complicated fabric. ”

“ In describing sponge as an animal substance, it may be necessary to explain that the sponge in ordinary use is the flexible skeleton of a living zoophyte, and was originally invested with a gelatinous or slimy matter, which lined all the pores and channels. When alive in the water, currents constantly enter the outer pores, traverse all the internal inosculating canals, and issue from the larger orifices which often project above the surface in perforated papillæ. ”

“ When a fresh sponge is squeezed, this mucilage comes out frothy, by the mixture of the windings of its fibres: it always issues forth with sand, or little parcels of shells crushed by the sea. These fibres, which consist of the twisted doubles of the sponge, form as it were a labyrinth filled with worms, which are easily crushed, and their juice is confused with the mucilage; but having carefully torn the sponges, and their gross fibres, I discovered the living worms, such as I shall mention hereafter.
These species of sponge commonly grow upon sandy bottoms. ”

“ They are erect, pendent, or spreading, according to their form or position. Fig. 10, drawn from Nature, represents a very remarkable form of sponge, which was fished up in sixty fathoms.
The sponge is very common in the Mediterranean and round the Grecian Archipelago, and is known vulgarly under the name of the Marine Mushroom, the Sailor's Nest, and the fine soft sponge of Syria. It is a mass more or less rounded, covered with a mucous bed, glutinous above, formed of a light elastic but resisting tissue full of [75] gaps, and riddled with air-cells. ”

“ Bhaer, when the settling of stools and rustling of papers had subsided.
Nan took her place beside the little table, and, with a preliminary giggle, read the following interesting essay on
“The Sponge.
“The sponge, my friends, is a most useful and interesting plant. It grows on rocks under the water, and is a kind of sea-weed, I believe. People go and pick it and dry it and wash it, because little fish and insects live in the holes of the sponge; I found shells in my new one, and sand. Some are very fine and soft; babies are washed with them. The sponge has many uses. ”

“ Why should the young sponge ever detach itself from the rock on which it first developed by the side of the great absorbent old sponge? It gets enough to eat, it is securely attached by its foot to the rock; it is in the oceanic level that suits its existence. Why should it let go all at once and float away, rise to the surface and cling elsewhere? Because of the monotony of its life of absorption and contraction, and of its sedentary habits. ”

“ A sponge cleanses and gets into all the nooks, corners, and crevices of the skin. Besides, sponge, to finish up with, is softer and more agreeable to the tender skin of a child than flannel. Moreover, a sponge holds more water than flannel, and thus enables 1018you to stream the water more effectually over him. A large sponge will act like a miniature shower-bath, and will thus brace and strengthen him.
6. To prevent a new-born babe from catching cold, is it necessary to wash his head with brandy? ”

“ It moves not, breathes not, has no organs of circulation, or of sense,—and yet it lives. How know we that, do you ask? Twice in every year the sponge reproduces. She lives after her fashion, and even more richly than many others. At the proper day, small spheres leave the mother sponge, armed with minute fins, which enable them for a short time to float about in full liberty, but soon coming [138] to anchor, they remain there, growing, reproducing, till the sponge-hunter carries them to the habitations of man, to the service of the greater enslaver, man, the civilized. ”

“ The simplest form of sponge, the olynthus, is in reality nothing more than a gastraea, the body-wall of which is perforated like a sieve, with fine pores, in order to permit the entrance of the nourishing stream of water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And just as with the coral, it took Folks a long time to find out whether sponges were plants, shrubs, or insects.
Now it is decided that the sponge is an animal growth. And the same as with coral, the tiny creature that it starts from dies, and out from the skeleton, or frame, branches the sponge that sometimes grows very large, and sometimes is of a kind that remains small. One may be as big as a mop, others no larger than an egg. ”

“ It takes thousands and thousands of minute creatures, to make a sponge, and these creatures are so little understood that about all we know of them is that they must belong to the very lowest order of [Pg 99] animal life, and that they do build sponges. That is not much to know, but it is not long since the sponge was first known to be an animal production at all, and our scientific men may yet find out something more definite about these curious little architects. ”

“ Under the microscope, these living sponge-units appear in various guises and shapes. Some of them are formless, and, as to shape, ever-altering masses, resembling that familiar animalcule of our pools we know as the Amoeba. These members of the sponge-colony form the bulk of the population. They are embedded in the sponge substance; they wander about through the meshes of the sponge; [pg 208] they seize food and flourish and grow; and they probably also give origin to the "eggs" from which new sponges are in due course produced. ”

“ Not only have sponges so many more useful and interesting parts than the amoeba, but they show, again, how fast you can make differences when you have more than one part to multiply with. Sponges have many different shapes, different colors, and they live in many different kinds of places. One kind of sponge is called the finger sponge, because it has fingers like the human hand. Another is shaped like a banana. Others are almost as round as a ball. ”

“ The sponge is sessile and massive, seldom forming branches, and is often to be found in great luxuriance of growth, masses of many pounds weight having been taken off barges in the Thames. The colour ranges from flesh-tint to green, according to the exposure to light. ”

“ There appears to be a well-marked relation between temperature and the power of spongin-secretion, and as a result we find that sponges with a really well-developed horny skeleton (whether Euceratosa or Pseudoceratosa) are usually only met with in comparatively warm waters. This fact brings about a striking contrast between the sponge-faunas of different latitudes. ”

“ R. E. Grant, who was the first to witness it, having put a small branch of living sponge, with some sea-water, into a watch-glass, saw a "living fountain vomiting forth from a circular . cavity an impetuous torrent of liquid matter, and hurling along, in rapid succession, opaque masses, which it strewed everywhere around." Here is a circulation of water answering the same purpose as that of blood in other animals. The sponge takes in food and oxygen through its minute pores, and voids the waste matter through the oscula, or larger orifices. ”

“ If the sponge becomes desiccated at the end of the cold weather and is protected in a sheltered place, some or all of the gemmules contained in the meshes of its skeleton germinate in situ as soon as the water reaches it again during the "rains." It is by a continuous or rather periodical growth of this kind, reassumed season after season, that large masses of sponge are formed. In such masses it is often possible to distinguish the growth of the several years, but as a rule the layers become more or less intimately fused together, for no limiting membrane separates them. ”

“ In 1816, Lamarck still advocated this opinion; and even now we find the observer, whose notes M. Frédol has edited with so much judgment, asserting that "the inhabitants of the sponge are a species of fleeting, transparent, gelatinous tube, susceptible of extension and contraction; young polypes, as we may call them, without consistence, without cilia; incipient polypes, in short, of very simple but sufficient organization. The animalcule of the sponge is a stomach, without arms, very simple, very elementary—in short, an animal all stomach!" ”

“ Close to primaeval chaos is the sponge—lowliest of animals. It is an animal without a brain, nervous system, heart, lungs, stomach, muscles or blood. But it has an I Am.
The sponge is in essence an anarchical horde of numberless cells. When the conglomeration is split up as can be done by a technique of squeezing through fine-meshed silk gauze, the cells continue to live as individuals. They crawl about. They take nourishment. ”

“ One gill of lively yeast is enough to put into sponge for two loaves. I should judge about three pints of sponge would be right for two loaves. The warmth of the place in which the sponge is set, should be determined by the coldness of the weather. If your sponge looks frothy in the morning, it is a sign your bread will be good; if it does not rise, stir in a little more emptings; if it rises too much, taste of it, to see if it has any acid taste; if so, put in a tea-spoonful of pearlash when you mould in your flour ”

“ There is nothing more pleasant for washing the skin than a fresh good sponge, or the reverse when not kept thoroughly clean. Without the greatest care, a sponge is apt to get slimy long before it is worn out. It may be made almost as good as, in fact often better than, new, by the following process:—Take about 2 or 3 oz. of carbonate of soda, or of potash; dissolve in 21⁄2 pints of water; soak the sponge in it for 24 hours, then wash and rinse it in pure water. Then put it for some hours in a mixture, 1 glassful of muriatic acid to 3 pints of water ”

“ A sponge is the skeleton of a very, very, tiny animal, or rather of a colony of thousands of such animals that live under water. When the little animals die they leave behind them this network of elastic fibers that they have built up. For a long time it was thought that sponges were plants, and even now scientists know really very little about these little animals. You have noticed how many kinds of sponges there are. ”

“ This group has the distinction of including among its Lyssacine members the oldest known sponge, Protospongia fenestrata, of Cambrian age (Salter) . As preserved it consists of a single layer of quadriradiate, or possibly quinqueradiate spicules, which, arranged as a square meshed lattice, supported the superficial layer of the sponge (Fig. 101) . Whether or not the fossil represents the whole of the sponge-skeleton does not appear. [236]
Fig. ”

“ Sponges of many hues must fairly carpet large areas of the deep water, as the dredge is often loaded with them. The small shore-loving ones which I photographed are in perfect health, but the camera cannot show the many tiny currents of water pouring in food and oxygen at the smaller openings, and returning in larger streams from the tall funnels on the surface of the sponge, which a pinch of carmine dust reveals so beautifully. ”

“ They are, however, nothing of the sort; the sponge once had a mouth, a single one, when it was young, but the adult sponge has lost it. For the young sponge is at first a little free-swimming, two-layered animal of the type which has been described above as the gastrula larva. When it gets old enough to settle down in life, it sinks upon some suitable surface, and becomes fixed to it, mouth downward: the mouth is thus lost. How, then, is the animal to be fed? ”