HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 



are they necessarily a rarity in any warm or temperate 

 part of the sea, but they develop better and reproduce 

 more freely in some beds than in others. They were 

 regarded by the old naturalists as peculiar to the Mediter- 

 ranean, but we all know that small varieties are found 

 round the British coasts ; the beautiful " mermaid's 

 glove " or five-fingered sponge is not seldom found in the 

 oyster-dredge, or, for that matter, on the fish-hook. 

 Moreover, in the year 1840, a European sponge-merchant 

 discovered that the valuable substance was as common as 

 mussels on the reef between Florida and the Bahamas, 

 and since then the West Indian industry has in some 

 respects promised to rival that of the Mediterranean. 



The spongy skeleton adheres very firmly to the sea- 

 bottom or the rocks on which it grows, and how to obtain 

 it uninjured is a very serious problem, which the fishermen 

 have endeavoured to solve in various ways : by diving, by 

 dredging, and by harpooning or hooking. 



The first method is the oldest and, from the merchant's 

 point of view, the safest and most profitable, and it has 

 been practised round about the Greek Islands, Sicily, the 

 Levant, and the north of Africa for ages. Six thousand 

 men are now employed in the Levant sponge-fishery alone, 

 and about the same number in other parts of the 

 Mediterranean. These Greek divers, like those of Ceylon, 

 are trained to their task almost from infancy, and become 

 gradually accustomed to working under water and to 

 enduring a pressure so great that less than half of it 

 would mean death to the untrained man. 



But sponge sometimes chooses a depth of from one to 



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