424 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [CHAP. vn. 



parts of different animals. It was therefore quite 

 possible that the whole thing might he 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 

 Linnaean Society a beautiful specimen of this kind 

 now in the British Museum : a stone has been 

 bored, probably by a colony of boring molluscs, 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 



