540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



glass are so flexible that a body is led to wonder if this is like the 

 product of that lost art. To us it seems doubtful whether any woven 

 glass, the product of art, can quite affect the singular lustre that be- 

 longs to these silicious threads spun from Nature's distaff*. Each 

 thread, although of pure silica, and solid, is really composed of a series 

 of concentric tubes or cylinders, as if spun on a central thread or core. 

 The effect, as respects the light, is not easily described. As the threads 

 are composed of pure silica, one might suppose that they would be 

 transparent, as a film of pure white glass of equal thickness. Such is 

 not the fact. They are translucent, and have just an appreciable tint 

 of the opal. It is this that imparts to Euplectella that softness of 

 aspect which has been called " a delicate satiny lustre." To us the 

 term opalescent seems better. We have a specimen which, in a good 

 light, shows the play of colors that frozen crispy snow does in the 

 moonlight. 



As to the idea "well-woven," which the name contains, the 

 fabric really seems to have its web and its woof. There are long 

 threads that traverse the whole length; and there are others that cross 

 and interlace, or, more correctly, interweave. And, what no loom of 

 human invention has ever done, this lowly weaver makes the fabric as 

 it progresses take on the most quaintly little flounces with the most 

 delicate frilled edges imaginable ; and all arranged in such charming 

 grace and ease not in parallel circles, like hoops on a barrel, but in 

 tasteful, easy-flowing curves. In the configuration of the innumerable 

 forms of structure, Nature, as she ascends in the grade of her work, 

 almost abandons her parallels in the outlining and ornamentation of 

 her constituted things. In the mineral province the structure of 

 crystals shows her delight in parallel, straight lines. The curve is a 

 rarity there. But in organic forms the curve is the rule, and the 

 straight line is the exception. The lace-like structure of the Euplec- 

 tella is so aerial a fabric, and so quaintly graceful, and, as one might 

 say, so deftly done in the putting together, that any embroidery 

 would seem in the comparison bungling. Enflounced in its own tiny, 

 crispy frills, there is an air of improvised beauty. And there is a 

 flavor of rank in the almost grotesque hint thrown out by the some- 

 times queer sort of relief afforded in this excess of elegance by a dash 

 of chevron-work. 



Euplectella is chiefly got from the Philippine Islands. The natives 

 have their own notions, it seems, about this marvellous object. They 

 will tell you that this beautiful sponge is found in pairs, and that they 

 are the work of little crabs, who, they believe, build these houses 

 while living inside them. It is a remarkable fact that generally in 

 these glass cornucopias, as if they were cages, a pair of little crabs 

 dwell together. How they ever got inside nobody knows. Can it be 

 that they are silly enough to wall themselves up in this limbo of 

 silica? Not they, although they do have nippers and thumbs. A 



