72 THE OCEAN WOULD. 



Infinitely varied in their form, the Protozoares are furnished with 

 vilratile cilia, which are organs of locomotion belonging to the lower 

 annuals inhabiting the liquid element. Their bodies are sometimes 

 naked, sometimes covered with a siliceous, chalky, or membranous 

 cuirass. They are divided into two great classes, the Rliizopoda and 

 Infusoria. 



SPONGIA. 



The Sponge is a natural production, which has been known from 

 times of the highest antiquity. Aristotle, Pliny, and all other writers 

 who occupied themselves with natural history in ancient times, are 

 agreed in according to it a sensitive life. They recognize the curious 

 fact that the sponge evades the hand which tries to seize it, and 

 clings to the rocks on which it is rooted, as if it would resist the 

 efforts made to detach it. Pliny, Dioscorides, and their commentators, 

 even formed the idea that sponges were capable of feeling, that they 

 adhered to their native rock by special force, and that they shrunk 

 from the hand which tried to seize them. They even distinguished 

 males from females. Erasmus, however, criticising Pliny, concludes 

 that he may pass over all he has written upon the sponge. The 

 sponge, in short, was to the ancients something between a plant and 

 an animal. 



Eondelet, the friend of the celebrated Eabelais, whom the merry 

 curate of Meudon designated under the name of Eondibilis, who was 

 himself a physician and naturalist of Montpellier, denied at first the 

 existence of sensibility in sponges. He originated the idea that these 

 productions belonged to the vegetable world an idea which Tourne- 

 fort, Gaspard Bauhin, Key, and even Linnaeus, in the first editions of 

 his "Systems Naturae," supported by the great authority of their 

 names. Afterwards, influenced by the convincing labours of Trembley 

 and some other observers, Linnaeus withdrew the sponges from the 

 vegetable world. He satisfied himself, in short, that certain poly- 

 piers much resembled sponges in the nature of their parenchyma, and 

 that, on the other hand, the assimilation of sponges with plants was 

 not such as could be maintained. Neuremberg, Peyssonnel, and 

 Trembley maintain the animal nature of sponges, and their views are 

 adopted by Linnaeus, Guettard, Donati, Lamouroux, and Ehrenberg 

 on the Continent, and by Ellis, Fleming, and Grant in England. 



