CHAPTER XX 

 HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 



What sponge is Where it grows Sponge-diving The undressed 

 diver A *' dressed" diver at work His dress The diver on the 

 bottom Signals Coming up Dredging for sponges Awkward 

 gear Sponge-harpooning The spy-glass The Adriatic trade 

 Sponge-culture Florida Keys Sponge-hooking in the Bahamas. 



A SPONGE is a skeleton, not of one animal but of 

 countless thousands, and it represents, as Professor 

 Huxley has expressed it, " a kind of sub-aqueous 

 city, where the people are arranged about the streets and 

 roads in such a manner that each can easily appropriate 

 his food from the water as it passes along." 



This skeleton may be flexible and elastic and horny, as 

 in the case of the ordinary washing sponge ; or it may be 

 calcareous, chalky, and therefore useless for the purposes 

 to which we ordinarily devote this substance. The 

 animals which inhabit it, and which are almost at the 

 bottom of the zoological ladder (for they come under the 

 head of protozoa), take the form of a jelly-like mass, not 

 unlike the uncooked white of an egg ; and this separates 

 itself from its shell or skeleton when the sponge is lifted 

 out of the water and squeezed. 



Sponges are not by any means confined to salt water, 

 although those of commerce are invariably marine ; nor 



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