COMMON AND UNCOMMON SPONGES.
A FINE SPONGE.
A FINE SPONGE.
A FINE SPONGE.
They are all wonderful enough, no matter how common they may be. It takes thousands and thousands of minute creatures, to make a sponge, and these creatures are so little understood that about all we know of them is that they must belong to the very lowest order ofanimal life, and that they do build sponges. That is not much to know, but it is not long since the sponge was first known to be an animal production at all, and our scientific men may yet find out something more definite about these curious little architects. Perhaps they may have lately found out something, and I have not heard of it. This would be the least wonderful thing about sponges.
The ordinary form of the sponge is familiar to nearly everybody who has ever been washed, and this picture gives a good idea of a fine large one, as it is found growing at the bottom of the sea. I say growing, because it seems to be growing there, like a vegetable. But it does not grow, in the ordinary sense of the word, any more than a wasp’s nest grows.
But there are sponges with which we are not at all familiar, and which are curious, apart from the manner of their construction. Such a one is the sponge called the “Cup of Neptune.”
This is several feet high, and is formed like a great goblet. It would make a very good cup for Neptune, if he drank brandy or rum, for it would soak up all that he poured into it, and he could not get a drop, unless he squeezed his cup pretty hard—and even then the liquor might all run out of the bottom.
As a rule, civilized and well educated people are more easily surprised and astonished at uncommon and wonderful works of nature than uncivilized or ignorant people, for the latter do not know enough to be astonished. They see nothing strange in the development of a plant from its seed—nothing grand in a high mountain, nor anything very beautiful in a flower. They look at these things as a child looks at his hand. The hand is a very curiously constructed instrument, full of intricate mechanism, but the child does not know or think of that. It is not until he grows older and his mind is cultured that he appreciates the wonderful construction and the varied action of his hand.
So it is with savages. They do not comprehend that many strange works of nature are worthy of admiration, and they take it for granted that things are as they are because they ought to be, just as they think of their own bodies, if they think of them at all.
THE CUP OF NEPTUNE.
THE CUP OF NEPTUNE.
THE CUP OF NEPTUNE.
But this great goblet-like sponge is strange enough to astonish even a savage.