8 FAIRY LAND AMONG THE SPONGES. 



and almost as many systems were promulgated as there 

 were zoologists to write about them. Meanwhile Nature 

 had her rebuff ready to produce, and before it all the 

 systems fell to pieces. 



Eather more than forty years ago, Von Siebold brought 

 from Japan, among other curiosities, some odd-looking 

 objects provisionally called Glass-ropes. One of them is 

 shown at Fig. 1, and is drawn about half its natural 

 dimensions. What these odd things were, no one could 

 say, and no one had seen anything like them. A bundle 

 of long, rather brittle, translucent threads, was sur- 

 rounded by a membrane, and at one end was an object 

 which was evidently a sponge, the other end being 

 attached to a small mass of coral. 



These singular objects were submitted to many scien- 

 tific men, and among others to Ehrenberg, the celebrated 

 microscopist. After careful examination he pronounced 

 that it was nothing but a zoological practical joke per- 

 petrated by some ingenious Japanese. 



He had certainly good reasons for mistrusting anything 

 strange that came from Japan. The patient industry 

 which enables a Japanese to be so "thorough" in his 

 work, that in a metal bow not half an inch in length, 

 every strand of the bowstring is separately twisted, and 

 every joint in a tiny golden lobster's antennae separately 

 engraved, combined with a singularly quaint and delicate 

 sense of humour, guide him not only in the legitimate 

 province of Art, but in the playful ingenuities of sham 

 monsters. 



