SEA-ANEMONES.
Fred could not say positively, but he thought he had seen not less than three or four.
"They are of every color imaginable," responded Captain Johnson; "we find them white, with a delicate shading of pearl, and we have them in gray, pink, purple, yellow, orange, lilac, green, and blue. Sometimes a single specimen will have half a dozen colors in his composition, and you could easily imagine he had borrowed all the hues of the rainbow in getting himself up to a satisfactory complexion. They have the properties of both animal and vegetable, and in this particular they resemble the sponge and other marine productions. If a part of the sea-anemone is destroyed, it is reproduced; and if one of them is torn or cut into several pieces, each piece converts itself into a perfect anemone."
"Is the sponge an animal?" Frank asked of the captain. "You said something about the sea-anemone having animal and vegetable properties like the sponge. I always supposed the sponge was a vegetable growing at the bottom of the sea, and had nothing of the animal about it."
"Scientific men have long been in dispute on this subject," was the reply; "and while some assign the sponge to the vegetable kingdom, others class it with the animal. The latest authorities favor the theory that the sponge is an animal, and all agree that it occupies a middle ground between the two forms of life.
THE SPONGE AT HOME.
"It is fastened to a rock, or to the hard bottom of the part of the sea where it grows, and it has no power of moving from one place to another. Water is continually absorbed into the sponge, just as we absorb air by breathing; and when the food and air contained in the water have served their purpose, the residue is thrown off.
"The sponge has a skeleton that must be dissolved and washed away before the article is of use. Various processes are used to remove the skeleton—according to the character of the sponge and the purposes for which it is designed. The finest are washed repeatedly in water, and in a weak solution of acid, and are then bleached in a bath of diluted soda. These fine sponges come from Syria, and from the Greek islands of the Mediterranean; the coarse sponges, used for washing carriages and similar purposes, come from the West Indies, and also from the East; and when first taken from the sea they have a sickening odor, like flesh that is just beginning to decay. This odor becomes stronger and stronger, and finally resembles exactly that which arises from a putrefying body. During this process of decomposition they are buried in the sand, and are afterwards submitted to the action of the waves to wash away the impurities that the decay has left."