CHAPTER III. 

 5PONQE5. 



To many persons the statement that we are going for a 

 ramble among the rocks in quest of sponges will merely 

 suggest the idea of wreckage, and they will suppose that we 

 have had information that a vessel, part ot whose cargo was 

 Turkey sponges, has gone to grief on the rocks near, and that 

 sponges are to be had for the trouble of picking them up. 

 And should they venture to accompany you on so promising 

 an expedition, they would certainly consider you demented as, 

 having reached the rocks that are only uncovered at very low- 

 tides, you proceeded to point out the green and orange and 

 brown and whity-yellow expanses that coat the vertical faces 

 of the rocks. All these things to them bear no resemblance to 

 the only sponges they know the ones they use daily for pur- 

 poses of ablution. You can show them something approaching 

 nearer to their ideal, if you hunt among the thick stems of the 

 shrubby weeds on the rock. There, encrusting a branch, is a 

 yellowish-brown form with rough surface and large pores very 

 much like those they know all about. And attached to various 

 weeds are others of the shape, size, and colour of melon seeds, 

 with porous surface and open end. 



Your friend, though disappointed, maybe, that he is not to 

 share in the salvage of some splendid bath sponges from the 

 supposed wreck, cannot help feeling some interest in the 

 extensive layers of colour on the rocks, some of it raised into 

 conical hillocks, and suggesting a fairy plain thickly studded 

 with volcanoes. You tell him that these are really aquatic 

 volcanoes so to speak, and that if you could get a portion off 



