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WE GO A-SPONGING 283 



dropping a few grains of carmine into the water, 

 the currents which the little sponge animals set 

 up are plainly visible. In winter these all die, and 

 leave within their meshes numbers of tiny winter 

 buds, which survive the cold weather and in the 

 spring begin to found new colonies. If we ex- 

 amine the sponges in the late fall we may find 

 innumerable of these statoblasts, as they are 

 called. 



Scattered among them will sometimes be 

 crowds of little wheels, surrounded with double- 

 ended hooks. These have no motion and we shall 

 probably pass them by as minute burrs or seeds 

 of some water plant. But they, too, are winter 

 buds of a strange group of tiny animals. These 

 are known as Polyzoans or Bryozoans ; and though 

 to the eye a large colony of them appears only as 

 a mass of thick jelly, yet when placed in water 

 and left quiet, a wonderful transformation comes 

 over the bit of gelatine. . . . "Perhaps while you 

 gaze at the reddish jelly a pink little projection 

 appears within the field of your lens, and slowly 

 lengthens and broadens, retreating and reappear- 

 ing, it may be, many times, but finally, after much 

 hesitation, it suddenly seems to burst into bloom. 

 A narrow body, so deeply red that it is often 

 almost crimson, lifts above the jelly a crescentic 

 disc ornamented with two rows of long tentacles 

 that seem as fine as hairs, and they glisten and 

 sparkle like lines of crystal as they wave and float 



