1 66 



Marvels ol the Universe 



and sweeping an area nearly fourteen feet wide catch in the upright sponges and drag their bases 

 out from the mud. These sponges, once so rare and expensive, were a drug in the market at the 

 time of our visit to Cebu. They were brought off to the ship in washing-basketsful, and sold at two 

 shillings a dozen." 



A very curious and inexplicable circumstance appears in the life-historj' of the Venus' Flower 

 Baskets. Within the vase formed by the skeleton two small crabs are to be seen in several of the 



specimens. They are prisoners in an 

 exquisite prison-house. They are not 

 parasites, for instead of living upon 

 their hosts, they live, as it were, at the 

 same table with them. The incurrent 

 streams of sea-water bring food to the 

 crabs as well as to the living sponge. 

 The crabs in this instance would be 

 termed " commensals," or chums. This, 

 however, is a department of nature 

 study which is sure to be noticed in a 

 satisfactory manner in a future part of 

 " Marvels of the Universe." 



A writer in Scrihner's Monthly 

 (1875) echoes opinions held by many 

 students of marine fauna : " The glass 

 hair of which these sponges are woven 

 is not transparent, as might be 

 imagined ; it is of pure and lustrous 

 white, giving, in certain lights, an 

 opalescent play of colour. The tex- 

 ture is like frost-work, phantom 

 flowers, the finest and filmiest of the 

 real Shetland lace ; it is so exquisitely 

 delicate and lustrously white as to 

 beggar description and to make one 

 turn disheartened awaj' from analogy. 

 In all the world^ there is perhaps 

 nothing so fairy-like as these wonderful 

 fabrics built up by this formless, struc- 

 tureless life in the darkness and still- 

 ness of the deep-sea waters." 



Photoh)'] [11'. Saville-Kent . 



THE COBEGO. 



This strange animal is a native of the forests of the Malay Archipelago 

 and neighbouring islands. It is enabled to fly. not with wings, like the bat. 

 but by means of the fold of skin stretched across from foot to foot. 



AN ANIMATED AEROPLANE 



BY W. P. PYCR.\FT, F.Z.S. 



Few animals have puzzled naturalists so much as the Cobego, Kaguan, or Flying Lemur, a native 

 of the great forests of the Malay Archipelago, Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippine Islands. This 

 remarkable creature has been placed with the Bats and with the Lemurs, but nowadays it is regarded 

 as most nearly related to the Insectivora — the insect-eaters : a group which contains such familiar 

 creatures as the hedgehog, the mole and the shrew. But even here it seems somewhat incon- 

 gruously placed, inasmuch as it does not eat insects, but leaves and fruit ! However, what an 

 animal eats is not nowadays regarded as the key to its genealogv. But we may leave this matter of 



