53 
his detailed treatises, “ de Partibus,” “ de Generatione,” we shall 
see the conclusions to which his observations led him. 
In Ills w^’k on the Parts of Animals he denies that sponges 
possess semsation, and moreover asserts that they possess the char- 
acter of a plant ; his real notion of their nature was probably that of 
many later observers, namely,that they were intermediate organisms, 
I)artly vegetable and partly animal. Aristotle has remarked more 
than once, that “ Nature pa.ssos continuously from things without 
life to animals, through things which live and are not animals, .so 
that they a])pear to diller very little one from another when viewed 
in connection.” 
Pliny’s knowledge of sponges is borrowed entirely from Aristotle, 
and he also claims an intermediate jiositiou for the sjionges j he 
says, “ that they have a third or middle nature, ami are neither 
living creatures nor yet plants.” He however seems to forget their 
“middle nature,” and assorts that sponges have life, yea, and a 
sensible' life, for there is found of their Idood settled within them ; 
and he quotes some writers who report, that they have the sen.se of 
hearing, which directs them to draw in their bodies at any sound 
or noise that is made, and therewith to siiueeze out plenty of water 
contained within. Pliny again quoting some w'riter.s, say.s, “ that 
sponges may be dLstinguished into male and female.” Although 
the early observers of sponges Avere inclined to believe in their 
animality, later writers were generiilly inclined to place them in 
the vegetable kingdom, and considered them to be imperfect pro- 
ductions, and as they were without .seed, they attributed their 
generation to a fermentation of the sea’s scum, or its spontaneous 
pallubating. There is found says Gerarde, in his Herbal, 163.3, 
“growing upon the rockes neare vnto the sea, a certain matter 
wrought together of the fome or froth of the sea, which we call 
spunges.” The animality of sponges was not, however, allowed to 
sink into oblivion, for every editor or annotator of Aristotle or 
Pliny reproduced their opinions of the anim.ality of the sponges, 
but no observer possessed sufficient courage to remove them from 
the vegetable kingdom. Ferranti Imperato in his Ilistoria 
Natiirale, 1672, although he had suspicions of their animal nature, 
describes the sponges among cryptogamous vegetables, and expresses 
an oi)inion, that in their structure they were closely allied to the 
Fungi. 
