SPONGE-FISHING. 



549 



sponges up with a three-pronged fork provided with a very long wooden handle. 

 Each boat carries a varying number of small dingheys. Two men are apportioned 

 to a dinghey, one for sculling, the other for hooking. The hooker leans over the 

 side, and views the surface of the reefs through a sponge-glass. Great skill is 

 required in sponge -fishing; indeed, the difficulty of hooking up a small dark 

 object in twenty or thirty feet of water, and often in a strong current, can be 

 imagined. Once a week the fleet returns to some selected locality to unload its 

 cargo into- a crawl, a staked enclosure covered with a few feet of water. The 

 preceding week's catch, with the skin and fleshy matter almost rotted off, is now 

 beaten, squeezed, hung in strings to dry in the sun, and finally packed in bales, 

 and sent to Nassau and Key West. Sponges used to be sold by weight, but owing 

 to the tendency to absorb moisture, and to the prevalence of the fraudulent 

 practice of weighting them with sand, they are now valued according to size, 

 shape, quality of fibre, etc. The fine toilet-sponge is found chiefly along the 

 eastern shores of the Mediterranean, from Trieste round by the Levant to Tripoli. 

 The distribution of the bath-sponge extends from East Greece, along the Levant 

 and the North African shore, and the zimocca-sponge from the Levant to Tripoli. 

 Good qualities of commercial sponges grow in the Red Sea; the Great Barrier 

 Reef off the north-east of Australia would probably yield a large supply. The 

 bulk of the harvest of sponges from Bahamas and Florida consists of common 

 bath-sponges. 



R. KIRKPATRICK. 



