,34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this horn-like sheath is coated with a fine silicious powdejr, just as it 

 would look if made of India-rubber, and while in the soft, adhesive con- 

 dition dusted over with fine sand. With so much told, we are pre- 

 pared for the curious scientific history of this interesting object, which 

 bears a number of popular names, such as Glass-Plant, Glass-Coral, 

 Glass-Rope, etc. 



When the scientific men of Europe first made acquaintance with it, 

 this object was an enigma, and for years the subject of much learned 

 controversy. In 1835, some specimens, brought by the traveller Von 

 Siebold, received special study by Dr. John E. Gray, of the British 

 Museum, who named the object Hyalonema Sieboldi. On one point, 

 to use a legal phrase, " each and every " of these learned men literally 

 lost his head when studying this apparent abnormal nondescript ; for 

 they all alike stood the specimens on their heads, that is, they placed 

 them, for study, theoretically upside down, namely, with the conical 

 sponge heads, or masses, downward, and of course the coils of silica 

 standing up. It must have been that the Japs themselves started this 

 notion, in honest ignorance, as I believe ; for in some natural-history 

 engravings, done by native artists, which are now before me, these 

 objects are portrayed, with the thread-like ends upward, and the sponge 

 mass downward, and as if adhering to something (Fig. 2). This is 

 curious, as the Japanese exhibit in their drawings a closeness in the 

 observation of details that is almost scientific. 1 Dr. Gray's position 

 made the sponge to grow on some object, or on the bed of the sea, and 

 out of the sponge-mass so adhering, like a glass brush standing on its 



1 I am indebted to our Japanese students at New Brunswick for an explanation of the 

 words on Fig. 2. They are the popular names of these objects in Japan. The cut gives 

 three representations of Hyalonema, the Japanese Glass Rope Sponge. The middle one 

 of them in the original has the fascicles, or bundles of silicious threads, colored red, 

 while the others are white. They are also represented as growing crowded together, some 

 six or more in a group. The Conical Sponge masses, too, are flattened, as if they were 

 adhering at the base to a rock. The fascicles, too, are naked, like the specimens that 

 Japanese ingenuity has prepared for market ; that is, they are devoid of any encrusting 

 polyp case or bark. It is evident that the artist has drawn upon the popular understand- 

 ing of the subject, and his own inner consciousness. The one with the red fascicles, the 

 color being probably the outcome of a lively imagination, has the Japanese name Aka- 

 hossz. The word hossz means a brush of long white hair, such as is used by the Bud- 

 dhist priests, and is derived from the adjective hosoi, meaning fine, thin, delicate. Aka 

 means red. The others, which have the usual white fascicles, are named hoshi-kai. The 

 words Iioshi and hossz seem to be interchangeable, as they are identically the same, but 

 are changed in the spelling for some reason not apparent. Hoshi, then, means a brush 

 of long white hair, and kai means a small bivalve. The word has that general applica- 

 cation to mollusks and crustaceans which seems to carry with it the significance of our 

 popular word shell-fish. The common name, then, of the Glass-Rope Sponge, in Japan, 

 would seem to be the Shell-fish with the brush of white hair, or the Long -white-haired Shell- 

 fish ; and, as we have the anomalous expression, a white-blackbird, so the Japanese have 

 the Red White-haired Shell-fish. Of course, no claim is here set up for philological accu- 

 racy, although the above is believed to be sufficiently correct for the purpose in hand. 



S. L. 



