6io 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [March i, ii 
thicknesses, int rlaced in such a manner as to form an 
incalculable number of cells and canals, the walls of 
which are coated with gelatinous stuff. Interwoven 
with this fibrous body are many particles of a mineral 
nature termed spiculaa, the character of which 
determines the species of the sponge. Their figura- 
tions are numerous ; some are like a pin, others have 
three or four points ; others, again, are sharp at 
both ends. The common sponge, however, that which 
is used for the bath and the dressing-room, is almost 
if not wholly without these spicule, and has in con- 
sequence jthe flexibility and compressibility which 
mainly contribute to its usefulness. The sponge sustains 
life by the perpetual passage of water through its 
porous conformation. If the fabric be closely ex- 
amined, the holes with which it is pierced will be 
found of two kiuds, one considerably larger than the 
other, but much less numerous. Through the minute 
passages the water penetrates the body of the sub- 
stance, passes through the smaller canals, and is then 
ejected in some amazing way through the larger ori- 
fices. A great authority on the Forifera relates that 
he put a small branch of sponge with some sea-water 
into a watch-glass, in order to examine it with 
the microscope. He beheld, he says, for the first 
time the spectacle of a living fountain vomiting forth 
from a circular cavity an impetuous torrent of liquid 
matter and hurling rapidly along a succession of 
opaque masses which it strewed everywhere around. 
" The beauty and novelty of such a scene in the ani- 
mal kingdom long arrested my attention, but after 
twenty -five minutes of constant observation I was 
obliged to withdraw my eye from fatigue, without 
having seen the torrent for one instant change its 
direction or diminish in the slightest degree the rapi- 
dity of its course. I continued to watch the same 
orifice, a short intervals, for five hours, sometimes 
observing it for a quarter of an hour at a time, but 
still the stream rolled on with a constant equal 
velocity." One may realise the spectacle submitted to 
an eye of microscopic power by motionless fields of 
the sponge at the bottom of the sea, multitudinously 
cascading in a vast area of glorious little foun- 
tains of diamond-like brilliancy. Yet it must be 
a melancholy existence. To begin and end as a 
spout offers but a mournful prospect even to a 
vegetable. A French authority on the sponge com- 
passionately wites of it :— " The poor creature receives 
its nourishment from the wave that washes past it ; 
it inhales and respires salt water all its life, and is 
insensible to anything that approaches its m^uth, even 
though it should only be one-hundredth part of an inch 
distant." 
The animal nature of the sponge is proved by its 
power of opening and closing its oscula at pleasure. 
Naturalists term it a simple organisation. Strictly speak- 
ing it is so. Yet it is furnished with so many 
mouths as to suggest an almost alarmingly compli- 
cated character. These mouths the thing can open and 
shut independently of one another ; wherefrom it is 
supposed that the sponge is not lacking in some quality 
that corresponds with our notion of sense, for it is 
sc ireely conceivable that Nature, who seems freakish 
only when her objects are not intelligible, should 
furnish it with irresponsible orifices over which it has 
no control. It is even possible that it may be supplied 
with something resembling a nervous system, for, in 
addition to its power to protrude from its orifices the 
gelatinous membrane which coats or clothes the chan- 
nel)?, it possesses in these same membranes so lively a 
sen utivcuess to touch that on one or the protruded 
parts being pricked by a needle it instantly shrank. It 
demands sumn eiTort of imagination, however, to con- 
ceive that the yellow bit of sponge as we know it was 
at one time an innumerable fountain, an animal formed 
chiefly of mouths and exquisitively-sensitive tongues, 
and Mine sort of faculty that might answer to mind 
in the very queer kingdom to which it belongs. Thnt 
it should propagate its .species is inevitable, and its 
manner of doing this is as strange as all other examples 
of its behaviour. First of all, minute globules of 
sarcode are ejected in the form of protuberances 
from tUe caualfl, They grow, and as they enlarge 
they furnish themselves with clothes to which the 
marine naturalist has given the name of vibratile 
cilia. When these globules think themselves suffici- 
ently matured they quit their nests like the fledg- 
ling, and roll out into the eternity of waters. They 
wander awhile, and a good many of them get devoured 
by hungry fishes. Those which escape, in some blind 
fashion make their way to the rocks or the bottom of 
the sea, to which they cling with barnacle-like resolu- 
tion. They are.absolutely defenceless, nevertheless they 
manage to grow into very considerable sponges, and not 
only maintain their existence, but are spread over the 
depths of the water in vast living carpets. There are 
three hundred known species of sponges, but very few 
of them are of any use to man. The common sponge is 
chiefly found in the waters whose fisheries the United 
States Consul has described. When alive it is an ex- 
ceedingly ugly object, of a rusty bluish-black above and 
dirty white beneath. Those which grow on the shore 
near the water's edge are many-coloured and even hand- 
some, but they are quite worthless for household pur- 
poses. Some of them are of a bright scarlet or of a 
clear yellow, others of a gamboge colour. A great many 
different species, more than sixty it is said have been 
discovered in British waters alone. The most interest- 
ing specimen of this sort of growth is the minute para- 
sitical sponge which will take up its abode in any holes 
it can find in the shell of the oyster, whence, penetra- 
ting deeper and deeper, it finally arrives at the vitals of 
the mollusc, until the softer parts of the shell rot away 
under the inexpressible nibbling. This may, perhaps, 
be adduced as another instance of the sensibility of the 
sponge. — Daihi Teleyraph. 
PLANTING IN NETHERLANDS INDIA 
AND NORTH BORNEO. 
{Translated for the Straits Times.) 
The Java Bode draws attention to the interest 
taken there in British North Borneo, owing to the 
cheapness of waste land in that new colony. So 
easily is landed property given away to attract 
population and capital to that thinly peopled 
country, that land speculators will be sure to be 
unusually active in that quarter to profit by such 
a splendid opportunity. The B. N. B. Company 
follows this course in the interest of its share- 
holders so as to render their business a paying 
concern. The Netherlands Indian Government is 
not guided by motives of gain in dealing with 
the public land. In Java under a bureaucratic 
system of government, applications for land, as 
usual, wherever routine and the delays of office 
have free play, are leisurely dealt with to the 
disgust of selectors, who make no allowances for 
long custom. They naturally compare it unfavour- 
ably with the system followed in British North 
Borneo, with its ruling powers anxious to have 
the colony paying its way as soon as possible. 
The Surabaya Courant affirms that this year's 
crop prospects in Java both as to coffee and sugar 
are not bright at all. The outlook is discoura- 
ging as bad weather has come on. The cane is yet 
too young to be blown down by the prevalent high 
winds which, may however, do other damage of 
consequence. The high wind has done much karm 
to the coffee trees. The young berries have largely 
been blown away, and the shade trees levelled with 
the ground. The prospects at the close of 1887 
were so encouraging that, the gloomier outlook of 
the new year brings home to the planters the foi'C9 
of the adage :- -there is many a slip between the cup 
and the lip. It is to be hoped that the event will 
belie this forecast which unfortunately rests on 
good grounds. The planting community has of late 
been so stricken by adversity, that the prospect of 
fresh trials does seem to come rather hard upon 
them. 
