"Oh, grandma," laughed Ned, "I'm sure a sponge isn't an animal."
"Are you?" she queried with an amused smile. "Now, little girls, what are your opinions in regard to the matter?"
"Why, I never thought of a sponge as being either an animal or a vegetable!" exclaimed Alie Leland. "Which is it, grandma?"
"It belongs to the animal kingdom," was the reply. "I have never seen it in its natural state, but from what I have read and heard I know it is a very different looking object from what it becomes in being prepared for the market. When first brought up from the water it looks something like a jelly-fish or mass of liver, its entire surface covered with a thin, slimy skin, usually of a dark color, and having openings into what we call the holes of the sponge. What we call a sponge is really only the skeleton of one."
"And men go down into deep water to get them, do they?" queried Ned.
"Do you know how deep the water is on this coast, Harold?" asked his mother.
"I have been told from ten to fifty feet here in Florida, mother, but considerably more in the Mediterranean Sea; and the finest grades are found in the deepest water. Sponges from that sea are said to be superior in quality to those found in either Florida or the West Indies."
"Go on, my son, and give us all the information you can," said his mother as he paused.
"If you wish it, mother," he replied with an affectionate look and smile. "In the waters of Florida and the West Indies the fishing is done in flat-bottomed boats called dingies. A tin or wooden pail with a glass bottom is used to help locate the sponges by lowering it into the water and looking down through it. When that has been done, they are brought up by means of a pole some thirty feet long, with a sharp, curved, double hook, with which they, the sponges, are detached and drawn up to the surface. Having gotten a boatload, it is laid out to decompose in a kraal on the beach, where it is washed by the sea. At that time the odor is very unpleasant. When they have been in the kraal about a week they are beaten out with a short, heavy stick, which removes most of the slime and animal matter still remaining in them, and where the black scum still adheres they are scraped with a knife. The sponges are next squeezed out right thoroughly with the hands, then taken to the shore and strung on pieces of coarse twine about six feet long, and then they are ready for sale by auction."