A BIT OF SPONGE
(Written on Scotland.)
(From Glimpses of Nature.)
By A. WILSON.
This morning, despite the promise of rain over-night, has broken with all the signs and symptoms of a bright July day. The Firth is bathed in sunlight, and the wavelets at full tide are kissing the strand, making a soft musical ripple as they retire, and as the pebbles run down the sandy slope on the retreat of the waves. Beyond the farthest contact of the tide is a line of seaweed dried and desiccated, mixed up with which, in confusing array, are masses of shells, and such olla podrida of the sea.
Tossed up at our very feet is a dried fragment of sponge, which doubtless the unkind waves tore from its rocky bed. It is not a large portion of sponge this, but its structure is nevertheless to be fairly made out, and some reminiscences of its history gleaned, for the sake of occupying the by no means "bad half-hour" before breakfast. "What is a sponge?" is a question which you may well ask as a necessary preliminary to the understanding of its personality.
The questionings of childhood and the questionings of science run in precisely similar grooves. "What is it?" and "How does it live?" and "Where does it come from?" are equally the inquiries of childhood, and of the deepest philosophy which seeks to determine the whole history of life. This morning, we cannot do better than follow in the footsteps of the child, and to the question, "What is a sponge?" I fancy science will be able to return a direct answer. First of all, we may note that a sponge, as we know it in common life, is the horny skeleton or framework which was made by, and which supported, the living parts. These living parts consist of minute masses of that living jelly to which the name of protoplasm has been applied. This, in truth, is the universal matter of life. It is the one substance with which life everywhere is associated, and as we see it simply in the sponge, so also we behold it (only in more complex guise) in the man. Now, the living parts of this dried cast-away sponge were found both in its interior and on its surface. They lined the canals that everywhere permeate the sponge-substance, and microscopic examination has told us a great deal about their nature.
1. The egg. 2, 3, and 4. The process of egg-division. 5 and 6. The gastrula-stage. 7. The perfect sponge.
For, whether found in the canals of the sponge themselves, or embedded in the sponge-substance, the living sponge-particles are represented each by a semi-independent mass of protoplasm. So that the first view I would have you take of the sponge as a living mass, is, that it is a colony and not a single unit. It is composed, in other words, of aggregated masses of living particles, which bud out one from the other, and manufacture the supporting skeleton we know as "the sponge of commerce" itself. Under the microscope, these living sponge-units appear in various guises and shapes. Some of them are formless, and, as to shape, ever-altering masses, resembling that familiar animalcule of our pools we know as the Amoeba. These members of the sponge-colony form the bulk of the population. They are embedded in the sponge substance; they wander about through the meshes of the sponge; they seize food and flourish and grow; and they probably also give origin to the "eggs" from which new sponges are in due course produced.
More characteristic however, are certain units of this living sponge-colony which live in the lining membrane of the canals. In point of fact, a sponge is a kind of Venice, a certain proportion of whose inhabitants, like those of the famous Queen of the Adriatic herself, live on the banks of the waterways. Just as in Venice we find the provisions for the denizens of the city brought to the inhabitants by the canals, so from the water, which, as we shall see, is perpetually circulating through a sponge, the members of the sponge-colony receive their food.
Look, again, at the sponge-fragment which lies before us. You perceive half a dozen large holes or so, each opening on a little eminence, as it were. These apertures, bear in mind, we call oscula. They are the exits of the sponge-domain. But a close inspection of a sponge shows that it is riddled with finer and smaller apertures. These latter are the pores, and they form the entrances to the sponge-domain.
On the banks of the canal you may see growing plentifully in summer time a green sponge, which is the common fresh-water species. Now, if you drop a living specimen of this species into a bowl of water, and put some powdered indigo into the water, you may note how the currents are perpetually being swept in by the pores and out by the oscula. In every living sponge this perpetual and unceasing circulation of water proceeds. This is the sole evidence the unassisted sight receives of the vitality of the sponge-colony, and the importance of this circulation in aiding life in these depths, to be fairly carried out cannot readily be over-estimated.
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.
