424 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [CHAP. IX. 
parts of different animals. It was therefore quite 
possible that the whole thing might be an imposi- 
tion: that some beautiful spicules separated from 
an unknown organism had been twisted into a whisp 
by the Japanese, and then manipulated so as to 
have their fibres naturally bound together by the 
sponges and zoophytes which are doubtless rapidly 
developed in the Mongolian rock-pools. Ehrenberg, 
when he examined Hyalonema, took this view. He 
at once recognized the silicious strands as the spicules 
of a sponge quite independent of the zoophyte with 
which they were encrusted; but he suggested that 
these might have been artificially combined into the 
spiral coil and placed under artificial circumstances 
favourable to the growth of a sponge of a different 
species round their base. The condition in which 
many specimens reach Europe is certainly calculated 
to throw some doubt on their genuineness. It seems 
that the bundles of spicules made up in various 
ways, are largely sold as ornaments in China and 
Japan. The coils of spicules are often stuck upright 
with their upper ends in circular holes in stones. 
Mr. Huxley exhibited a few years ago at the 
Linnean Society a beautiful specimen of this kind 
now in the British Museum :—a stone has been 
bored, probably by a colony of boring molluses, and 
a whole colony of Hyalonemas, old and young, are 
apparently growing out of the burrows, the larger 
individuals more than a foot in length, and the 
young ones down to an inch or so, like tiny camel’s- 
hair pencils. All these are encrusted by the usual 
zoophyte, which also extends here and there over . 
the stone (glued on probably), but there is no trace 
