32 



LIFE, IN ITS LOWER FORMS. 



which he elaborately examines the whole question, con- 

 cluding with the following verdict : — " Few, on examining 

 the green Spongilla, would hesitate to pronounce it a vege- 

 table, a conclusion which the exacter examination of the 

 naturalist seems to have proved to be correct ; and when 

 we pass on from it to an examination of the calcareous and 

 siliceous marine genera, the impression is not so much 

 weakened but that we can still say with Professor Owen, 

 ' that if a line could be drawn between the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms, the Sponges should be placed upon 

 the vegetable side of that line.' We shall possibly, how- 

 ever, arrive at an opposite conclusion if, proceeding in our 

 inquiry, we follow the siliceous species, insensibly gliding, 

 on the one hand, into the fibro-corneous Sponge, filled 

 with its mucilaginous fishy slime, and, on the other, into 

 the fleshy Teth.ya, in whose oscula the first signs of an 

 obscure irritability shew themselves. Sponges, therefore, 

 appear to be true zoophytes ; and it imparts additional 

 interest to their study to consider them, as they probably 

 are, the first matrix and cradle of organic life, and exhibit- 

 ing before us the lowest organisations compatible with its 

 existence." * 



s Many of our readers are probably cognisant of only one 

 kind of Sponge, — the soft, plump, woolly, pale-brown 

 article, so indispensable in our dressing-rooms ; or, at the 

 most, two, if they chance to have noticed the large-pored, 

 coarser sort with which grooms wash carriages.. It may 

 surprise such persons to be informed that the streams and 

 shores of the British Isles produce sixty or seventy distinct 

 species of Sponge ; and that every coast, especially in the 



* Brit. Sponges, p. 68. 



