Let us now see how this circulation is maintained.  Microscopically regarded, we see here and there, in the sides of the sponge-passages, little chambers and recesses which remind one of the passing-places in a narrow canal.  Lining these chambers, we see living sponge-units of a type different from the shapeless specks we noted to occur in the meshes of the sponge substance itself.  The units of the recesses each consist of a living particle, whose free extremity is raised into a kind of collar, from which projects a lash-like filament known as a flagellum.

This lash is in constant movement.  It waves to and fro in the water, and the collection of lashes we see in any one chamber acts as a veritable brush, which by its movement not only sweeps water in by the pores, but sends it onwards through the sponge, and in due time sends it out by the bigger holes, or oscula.  This constant circulation in the sponge discharges more than one important function.  For, as already noted, it serves the purpose of nutrition, in that the particles on which sponge-life is supported are swept into the colony.

Again, the fresh currents of water carry with them the oxygen gas which is a necessity of sponge existence, as of human life; while, thirdly, waste matters, inevitably alike in sponge and in man as the result of living, are swept out of the colony, and discharged into the sea beyond.  Our bit of sponge has thus grown from a mere dry fragment into a living reality.  It is a community in which already, low as it is, the work of life has come to be discharged by distinct and fairly specialized beings.

The era of new sponge-life is inaugurated by means of egg-development, although there exists another fashion (that of gemmules or buds) whereby out of the parental substance young sponges are produced.  A sponge-egg develops, as do all eggs, in a definite cycle.  It undergoes division (Fig. 1); its one cell becomes many; and its many cells arrange themselves first of all into a cup-like form (5, 6 and 7), which may remain in this shape if the sponge is a simple one, or become developed into the more complex shape of the sponges we know.

In every museum you may see specimens of a beautiful vase-like structure seemingly made of spun-glass.  This is a flinty sponge, the “Venus flower-basket,” whose presence in the sponge family redeems it from the charge that it contains no things of beauty whatever.  So, too, the rocks are full of fossil-sponges, many of quaint form.  Our piece of sponge, as we may understand, has yet other bits of history attached to it....  Meanwhile, think over the sponge and its ways, and learn from it that out of the dry things of life, science weaves many a fairy tale.

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THE GREATEST SEA-WAVE EVER KNOWN

(FROM LIGHT SCIENCE IN LEISURE HOURS.)

BY R.A.  PROCTOR.

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