SPONGE. 
apply a blister, and perhaps also a second blister. 
But a new, ingenious, generally successful, and 
but slightly painful method of reducing splents 
has been introduced by Professor Sewell. “ He 
removes any inflammation about the part by the 
use of poultices or fomentations; and then, the 
horse being cast, the operation is commenced 
by pinching up the skin, immediately above the 
bony enlargement, with the finger and thumb of 
the left hand, and with the knife, or lancet, or 
scissors, making an orifice sufficient to introduce | 
a probe-pointed bistoury, with the edge on the 
convex side. This is passed under the skin along 
the whole length of the ossification beneath, cut- 
ting through the thickened periosteum down to 
the bone; and this being effectually completed by 
drawing the knife backwards and forwards seve- 
ral times, a small tape or seton is inserted, and if 
the tumour is of long standing, kept in during a 
few days. Perhaps slight inflammation may 
appear, which subsides in a few days if fomen- 
tation is used. The inflammation being removed, 
the enlargement considerably subsides, and in 
many cases becomes quite absorbed.” 
SPONDIAS. See Hog Privo. 
SPONGE. A genus of coralliferous polypi. 
They are marine fibrous bodies, whose only sensi- 
ble portion seems to be a kind of tenuous gelatine, 
which dries off when the bodies are removed from 
their habitat, and which leaves scarcely a trace of 
itself, and no trace whatever of any moving part 
or strictly true animal organism. A tremulous- 
hess or contraction is said to occur in living 
sponges when they are touched, and a kind of 
palpitation also is said to be observable in the 
pores or orifices of their surface ; but the reality 
or at least the sentiency of these alleged motions 
is rather questionable. Sponges assume ex- 
ceedingly different shapes, each according to its 
species, and present resemblances to shrubs, 
vases, fans, horns, tubes, globes,and other objects. 
The common or officinal sponge, called by scienti- 
fic naturalists, Spongia officinalis, is familiar to 
almost every person. In its natural or living 
state, it is a flexile, fixed, torpid, polymorphous 
animal, comprising innumerable reticulate fibres 
or small mutually interwoven spires, clothed with 
a thin gelatinous flesh, full of small mouths, by 
which it absorbs and ejects water; and in its 
dead state, it remains nearly the same as before 
except for being freed from its functional gela- 
tine,—but may be described as a brown mass 
of extremely fine, flexible, elastic fibres, perfo- 
rated with numerous intercommunicating pores 
and little irregular canals. It is found princi- 
pally in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; 
and occurs on rocks and stones at considerable 
depths beneath the surface ; and is obtained in 
large quantities by divers belonging to the 
islands of the Grecian Archipelago; and has 
long been imported to Britain in large quanti- 
ties from Smyrna. In a well cleaned state, it 
is of great service in the practice of surgery, and 
SPOONBILL. 313 
in many of the cleaning operations of the stable, 
the farmery, the bath, and the bedroom,—being 
soft, light, and very porous, rapidly absorbing by 
capillary attraction either water or any other 
liquid in which it is immersed, and as readily 
parting with it by compression. When digested 
in boiling distilled water, it yields a considerable 
proportion of gelatine, and loses much of its flexi- 
bility, and becomes capable of crumbling when dry ; 
when boiled with potash, it saponifies ; and when 
burnt, it yields iodine and perhaps bromine. Its 
principal constituents are gelatine and albumen, 
with a small portion of common salt and some 
carbonate of lime. It is, of course, too expensive 
to be generally or normally used for manure; 
and when in any case it becomes available for 
that purpose, it needs first to be reduced in tex- 
ture and considerably decomposed. 
SPONGE-TREE,—botanically Acacia Farne- 
sana. A small, ornamental, fragrant, evergreen, 
tropical tree, of the mimosa division of legumi- 
nose. It was introduced to the hothouses of 
Britain from St. Domingo about the middle of the 
17th century. Its stem rises to the height of 
about 15 feet; its leaves are bipinnate; its 
prickles are stipular and straight; and its flowers 
grow in globose heads, and have a yellow colour, 
and bloom from June till August. 
SPONGIOLES. The pulpy and bibulous ex- 
tremities of the fine fibres or extreme radicles of | 
the roots of plants. They comprise each one 
or more central ducts or vessels, enveloped by a 
cellular tissue; but they have no epidermis or 
cuticle, and are supposed to consist of the nascent 
or newly-formed tissue of the root. They occur 
only at the extremities of radical fibres, and are 
constantly advancing or changing place with the 
growth of the radicles. They absorb the food of 
plants from the soil, and constitute the mouths 
of the radicles pushing onward in search of it, 
and take it in only in a liquid condition, and 
probably exert in some degree both an electric 
and a chemical power over the materials of it in 
the action of absorbing them, yet not to such an 
amount as to prevent them from being seriously 
controlled in their secretions, and even absolutely 
poisoned, by peculiar conditions of the soil. See 
the article ABsorPTION IN PLants. 
SPOONBILL,—scientifically Platalea. A genus 
of birds, of the cultirostrous family of waders. 
Their general structure is near akin to that of 
the storks; but their bill, whence they derive 
their name, is long, flat, broad throughout, 
widened and flattened at the end so as to form a 
spatula-like disk, and has two shallow grooves 
extending from the base almost to the end, but 
without being parallel to the edges.—The white 
spoonbill, Platalea leucorodia, is an occasional 
visitant of the British shores, and one of the most 
singular-looking birds ever seen in our country. 
Its total length from the point of the bill to the 
tip of the tail is about 32 inches,—and the portion 
of this in the bill alone is about 9 inches; its en- 
