454 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
several cargoes offered before the sale begins, and the bids usually run pretty 
close, though I have seen a bidder, through some miscalculation and his anxiety 
to buy, offer 40 per cent more than his nearest competitor. 
At Tarpon Springs until recently the sponges were sold at the several 
crawls at such times as the spongers chose to offer them. As the crawls were 
several miles from the town and separated from one another by considerable 
distances, much time was often lost in the disposal of relatively small quantities. 
To obviate this a sponge exchange has been organized by the buyers, who have 
bought a suitable site on the river near town and have erected houses and bins 
suitable for the storage of their purchases. ‘The expenses of construction and 
operation are borne jointly by the buyers, or the houses which they represent. 
The actual sales follow the system already described. Tarpon Springs first 
became a sponge mart on a small scale about 1891, and at the end of ten years it 
had passed Key West in importance. With the waning of the catch on the 
Key grounds, and especially with the development of diving, it has now secured 
a practical monopoly of the business and Key West has become an almost 
negligible factor. 
Packing.—As purchased from the fishermen the sponges are cleaned of 
animal matter, but they are more or less irregular where they have been torn 
from the bottom, and they frequently contain shells or fragments of coral and 
rock. After they are received at the packing house these foreign particles are 
removed and the irregularities and torn parts clipped off with sheep shears, the 
“clippers” requiring some skill to reduce the sponge to a regular shape with a | 
minimum of waste, the work being done tg best advantage while the sponges are 
wet. Large specimens, for which there is a limited demand, and especially 
those which are torn or contain crab holes, are cut into pieces with a sharp 
knife, the edge of which has been serrated with a file. Nearly all Anclote or 
Bay grass sponges, which are usually large and cup-shaped or conical, are so 
treated, as are at times considerable quantities of sheepwool and yellow sponges. 
There is always more or less loss in cutting up large sponges owing to the waste 
of trimming off the sharp edges left by the knife. After being trimmed the 
sponges are sorted according to size and quality, the whole perfect specimens 
being known as ‘‘forms,”’ those with holes and similar imperfections as ‘‘ seconds,”’ 
while cut pieces are known as “cuts.” The sizes are named from the number of 
’ 
“pieces” required to make a pound, the usual sizes being ‘“‘ones, twos,”’ 
“twos to threes,’ ‘‘threes to fours,’’ ‘‘fours to sixes,” sixes to eights,” “‘ eights 
, J 
to tens,” “tens to twelves,’’ ‘‘twelves to sixteens,” and “‘sixteens to twenties.”’ 
The “sizing” is usually made by eye, but in some cases, for greater accuracy, 
the sponges are passed through holes or rings. 
The first sponges shipped from Key West were packed in cylindrical bales 
about 6 or 7 feet long and compressed by hand or treading with the feet, but within 
