Z5 



than £^o, and is now on view in the British Museum. At 

 the present day fine examples may be obtained for but 

 little more than as many pence as the original type cost 

 pounds. The Euplectella, as sold in the market, being 

 then divested of the bufif-coloured gelatinous flesh or 

 sarcode, with which it was originally covered, has the form 

 of an elongate, slightly-bent tube, of about one foot in 

 height, which gradually widens towards its free or upper- 

 most extremity. The walls of this tube are composed of 

 silicious spicules and fibres, interwoven and amalgamated 

 with one another in such a fashion as to resemble very 

 delicate basket work, wrought out of clear spun glass. A 

 certain number of the larger fibres are disposed longi- 

 tudinally, and others at right angles, leaving square inter- 

 stices, the areas of which are further circumscribed and 

 rounded off by the interpolation of smaller spicules. 

 Raised crests of fine anastomosing spicules are developed 

 in an irregularly spiral pattern, upon the outside through- 

 out the length of the tube, the top of which, in perfect 

 examples, is further covered in with a perforated lid of the 

 same silicious network. The base of attachment of this 

 fairy-like structure is finally embraced by a delicate sheaf 

 of long needle-like spicules, which serve to keep the 

 organism securely anchored in the yielding mud at the 

 bottom of the seas which it inhabits. It not unfrequently- 

 happens that several examples of a species of crab are 

 found within the tubular cavity of the Euplectella, present- 

 ing to the uninitiated a problem for solution, akin to that 

 which puzzled a certain crowned head, respecting the apple 

 found inside the dumpling ; the crab certainly could not, 

 in its adult state, effect its entrance through the relatively 

 minute interstices of the sponge wall, and the only logical 

 interpretation of the phenomenon is that it passed through 



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