242 Thirty-Third Annual Meeting 
the present summer may presage difficulties which it will require 
much experimentation to overcome. On the whole, however, the 
results are regarded as promising and that this is not the opin- 
ion of the Bureau of Fisheries alone is indicated by the fact that 
a firm of wide experience in the sponge business has recently 
undertaken the experiment on a commercial scale, a venture re- 
quiring not a little business courage and enterprise. 
DISCUSSION OF MR. MOORE'S PAPER. 
Dr. Smith: This may not be such a burning question as the 
carp issue, but I think the whole civilized world is interested in 
bath and toilet sponges. Dr. Moore has been engaged in experi- 
menting at a number of points on the Florida coast in the grow- 
ing of sponges from cuttings, this appearing to be the only feasi- 
ble way of increasing the sponge supply artificially. The sponge 
industry of Florida and the Mediterranean is reported to be in a 
very unfortunate condition, owing to an alarming decrease in 
the supply. The countries most interested have inaugurated 
legislation prohibiting the further use of diving apparatus for 
collecting sponges, it being held, and probably truthfully, that 
the heavy shoes of the divers crush the small sponges while the 
divers themselves are able to clean up the bottom so effectually 
that there is no seed left. 
Dr. Moore has worked under very great disadvantages, and 
is not yet ready to recommend to the sponge world a thoroughly 
practicable method of sponge culture, but I can say for him that 
he has got so far along in his work that the outlook is very prom- 
ising. 
The method he is now pursuing is to take sponges as they 
come out of the water, which look very different from the sponges 
we use In our houses, and cut these sponges mto small pieces, 
which are in turn incised and put on wires which run through 
the incised places, these wires being strung between sticks, so 
that the sponges attached thereto are beneath the surface at all 
stages of the tide. 
! will pass this sponge around because many gentlemen have 
heyer seen a sponge as it comes out of the water. The skeleton 
which we use in our houses is filled with a pulpy mass which is 
