VOL. LV.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 25^ 



the sea side at Brighthelinstone, he dissected carefully the spongia medullam panis 

 referens, or crumb of bread sponge, in hopes of discovering the small animal that 

 was supposed to fabricate them ; and was surprised to find a great number of 

 small worms in them, particularly a very small kind of nereis, or sea-scolopendra ; 

 but these worms appeared evidently, instead of being the fabricators of it, to 

 have pierced their way into its soft substance, and made it only their place of 

 retreat and security. After this, he proceeded along the sea coast to Little 

 Hampton, near Arundel, on the coast of Sussex, where he took up out of the 

 sea several specimens of the same sort of sponge full of an orange-coloured gela- 

 tinous matter; and, while they were just fresh from the sea, examined them, 

 after they had rested for some time, in glasses of sea water; and to his great sur- 

 prise, instead of seeing any of the polype-like suckers, or any minute animal fi- 

 gure, come out of the papillae, or small holes with which they are surrounded, 

 he only observed these holes to contract and dilate themselves. And as a further 

 confirmation of this motion, being at Hastings in Sussex, in August 1764, he 

 collected from the rocks at ebb-tide, just under water, a variety of the same kind 

 of sponge, but of a pale yellow colour, and in the form of several cock's combs 

 united together, the tops of which were full of tubular cavities, or papillae; when 

 he examined these in glasses of sea water, he could plainly observe these little 

 tubes to receive and pass the water to and fro; so that the sponge is an animal sui 

 generis, whose mouths are so many holes or ends of branched tubes opening on 

 its surface; with these it receives its nourishment, and by these it discharges, 

 like the polypes, its excrements. 



But to give a further proof of sponges sucking in and throwing out the sea 

 water, he quotes a passage from that fair investigator of nature, the celebrated 

 Count Marsigli, in his Histoire Physique de la Mer, p. 53, who, notwithstand- 

 ing he took them for plants, as well as he did corals, &c. has in his chapter of 

 sponges this curious observation, which proves quite the contrary. " J'ai un 

 fond sufRsant de ces plantes pour en faire une botanique entiere, et plusieurs re- 

 flexions curieuses sur la systole et diastole, que j'ai observees, dans certains petits 

 trous ronds de ces plantes, lors qu'elles sortent de la mer, mouvement qui dure 

 jusqu'^ ce que I'eau soit entierement consumee." In English thus : " I have a 

 sufficient stock of these plants (sponges) to make a complete botanical collection, 

 with many curious remarks, which I have made on the systole and diastole, 

 which I have observed in certain small round holes, when they are first taken out 

 of the sea; this motion continues in them till the water they contain is entirely 

 wasted away." Nothing can more clearly describe what Mr. E. saw in his 

 sponges; so that, making an allowance for the then prevailing opinion that they 

 were vegetables, he thinks the Count comes nearer the trutli than Dr. Peys- 



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