Sponging

“ Sponge, spunj, n. a fixed, usually marine, animal with pores in the body-wall and without tentacles: the fibrous framework of such, remarkable for its power of sucking up water: any sponge-like substance, as dough before it is kneaded and formed: any cringing hanger-on or parasite, a drunken fellow: an instrument for cleaning cannon after a discharge: the heel of a horse's shoe.—v.t. to wipe with a sponge: to wipe out, absorb up, with a sponge: to wipe out completely: to destroy.—v.i. to suck in, as a sponge: to gain by mean tricks, to live on others by some mean subterfuge or other.—ns. ”

“ The sponge is the lowest animal that is made of more than one cell. The sponge has a stomach on the inside and bones on the outside. By living, a great many of them, in one house or village, like those old cliff-dwellers, all the little sponges get along better. They live very close neighbors, all work for each other, buy their food of the same grocer, and pay for it in a lump. ”

“ 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 worst enemy of sponge-culture is mud. The sponges chosen for cutting must be gathered by experienced hands, with all possible gentleness, so as to avoid tearing them. They should be cut up rapidly, with a common knife, or, better, a saw-like blade, being laid for the purpose on a smooth wooden board, moistened with sea-water, into pieces of about one cubic inch each; and it is well that each cutting should have the greatest possible area of uninjured outer skin. A healthy piece of sponge firmly attaches itself to any surface with which it comes into intimate contact, in a short time. ”

“ The Green Sponge appears quite marvellous to one who sees it for the first time. Take a large, rather coarse sponge, put it in a glass bowl, sprinkle it with sand and give it as much water as it will hold, then scatter all over it flaxseed or mustard seed, clover seed or buckwheat and place in your window. It will not be long before you have a sponge of living green, the secret of whose beauty lies in its being kept always wet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Down in the blue Mediterranean Sea are found the best sponges that grow. They are called "horny sponges," and grow in great masses, fine, yet tough and durable. A sponge from the Mediterranean, called the "Turkey sponge," will cost three times as much as a coarser, more brittle one from other waters. They are porous, or full of little holes and hollows.
We fishes like to bang against the sponges and feel the sudden spray dash over us. Water we have all around and about us, but a shower-bath is not as common a thing. ”

“ 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? ”

“ To any one who hesitates to acknowledge that the sponge is endowed with animal life—confessedly in its lowest form, yet with a most exquisite adaptation to its destiny—we would offer the spectacle of a living sponge in a portion of its native element. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are many forms who weave a home of far more delicacy and beauty than their more familiar and homely brothers. The sponge creature itself is a slimy, soft creature, which fills in the spaces in its spongy skeleton. It is fastened to one spot, and gathers in its food from the water around it (and oxygen as well) , by means of numerous whip-like filaments called cilia, which flash through the water driving in the food and oxygen to the inner positions of its body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A sponge bath, or large tub, with a bucket of water and a good-sized sponge, can readily be obtained, even in the most humble dwelling, and answers as well as can be wished. When the body is simply sponged over with tepid water it makes one of the mildest baths that can be taken; but those who are in ordinary health can well lather them selves over with soap and cold water, and then wash it off with some squeezes of the sponge copiously wetted with the water. ”

“ In the Spongia fluviatilis, or fresh - water sponge, the pores are not permanent, but they appear and disappear without leaving a trace behind, as in the case of the amœbæ.
The spiculæ of the siliceous sponges assume sundry shapes, being sometimes straight, like needles; again headed and pointed like pins, or furnished with grapnel-like hooks at their ends, etc. Perhaps the most curious of all the sponges is the "glass-rope" (Hyalonema) , which has the appearance of a rope of twisted glass fibres, with a fibrous sponge attached to one end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A diver at work under water.
When he has filled his bag with sponges, he gives a signal on the life-line attached to his waist, and is drawn up to the surface. toilet article, we are not aware that it is practically indispensable in many of the arts. Science has offered substitutes for it made of rubber, but nature’s product still remains far superior to anything that man has thus far manufactured. The sponge, as we know it, is merely the fibrous skeleton which supported the soft gelatinous tissue of the living animal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sponges.—Naturalists are now generally agreed in classing the sponge with animals, but place it in the very lowest rank of the Protozoa, abutting on the vegetable kingdom. Like a plant, the sponge grows on rocks or other substances in water, being often found attached to the shells of living crustaceans. ”

“ BREAD SPONGE AND BREAKFAST BREADS. BREAD raised with what is known to bakers as a “sponge,” requires more time and a trifle more work than the simpler form for which I have just already given directions. But it keeps fresh longer, is softer and more nutritious, and a second-rate brand of flour thus treated produces a better loaf than when mixed up with yeast and water only. Sponge-making is, therefore, an important if not an essential accomplishment in a cook, be she novice or veteran. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most of the species start in life as buds from attached animals, which later separate and henceforth lead a free existence, swimming by opening and closing the bell.
SPONGES SPONGES (Porifera) are animals of peculiar structure, which resemble zoophytes in many respects, but possess neither tentacles not thread-cells. Some are simple, but most of them are compound. A simple sponge may be compared to a cup or vase with a wall perforated by numerous small holes, through which currents of sea-water stream into the central cavity, to make their exit by the main opening. ”