I saw the living pile ascend,
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upward as their labour closed....
Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable. All
Life’s needful functions, food, exertion, rest,
By nice economy of Providence
Were overruled to carry on the process
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.”
And now we arrive at the last of the valuable fisheries in which divers are concerned—that of the sponge. The ancients recognised the fact that the sponge exhibited vitality, but were rather undecided as to whether it should be counted animal or vegetable. Rondelet—the friend of the celebrated Rabelais, whom the merry curate of Meudon designated under the name of Rondibilis—himself a physician and naturalist of Montpellier, long promulgated the idea that these productions belonged to the vegetable kingdom. Linnæus late in life withdrew the sponges from among the vegetables, for he had satisfied himself, in short, that they fairly belonged to the animal kingdom. Sponges live at the bottom of the sea in from 500 to 1,250 fathoms of water, among the clefts and crevices of the rocks, always adhering and attaching themselves, not only to inorganic bodies, but even growing on algæ and animals, spreading, erect, or pendent, according to the body which supports them and their natural habit.