SPONGES 



for a moment) this Is very much like what we do 

 in the sponge world. Having admitted and for- 

 gotten it, let us now seek to acquire merit by mak- 

 ing our bath sponge quicken our mind with the 

 splendors of the living beings themselves. 



Sponges hold no mean position in the kingdom 

 of animals, for they comprise a group equal to 

 that which includes all back-boned creatures from 

 sharks to ourselves, and they have the honor of 

 being the lowest living animals whose bodies con- 

 sist of more than one cell. I am always fascinated 

 by the astonishing skill of a man who plays six or 

 eight instruments at once; and under the micro- 

 scope an amoeba fills me with the same admiration, 

 when I see it move and eat, choose and reject, live, 

 reproduce and die. But, as in the case of the 

 solitary human orchestra, the single-ceUed animal 

 soon palls, and I turn to other, more complex 

 organisms. 



Let us enter the realm of sponges. With helmet, 

 hose and pump in order, I slip off the port gang- 

 way. With a last Blop! of air I submerge on my 

 slim rope, and slide gently down past the schooner's 

 hull. The waves are high and the water is filled 

 with powdered lime, and down and down I go 

 through the heart of a liquid column of chalk — my 

 uttermost horizon less than five feet away. A 

 smudge at last appears beneath and, in our present 

 anchorage, at seven fathoms my feet touch bottom. 

 I suddenly realize that on the way down I have 

 revolved slowly and that somewhere above me the 



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