A sponge is the skeleton of a very, very, tiny animal, or rather of a colony of thousands of such animals that live under water. When the little animals die they leave behind them this network of elastic fibers that they have built up. For a long time it was thought that sponges were plants, and even now scientists know really very little about these little animals. You have noticed how many kinds of sponges there are. These different varieties are caused partly by differences in temperature and chemical composition of the water and partly by the fact that there are more than one species or variety of the animal itself. There is no need to enumerate all the kinds of sponges from the fine, soft ones used in surgical operations to the big, coarse ones used for washing carriages. Nearly all the sponges inhabit salt water and the best ones come from the Mediterranean, particularly the Levant or that eastern part of the Mediterranean bounded by Syria, Asia Minor and the Holy Land and Egypt. Others are found in the waters around Florida and in those near Australia. The sponges are secured by means of native divers. In some places these men work all day long from sunrise to sunset through six months of the year, resting during the winter. The work is, of course, very hard and few of them reach old age. Often they are treated with inhuman cruelty by their employers and many are killed by sharks. Particularly in Florida there have been attempts made to raise sponges artificially, but though it is easy to secure the spawn of the tiny animals and succeed in getting them to attach their little colonies to stones, coral or other objects under water, the sponges never reach any considerable size and are commercially useless. They have also tried to propagate them by cuttings or slips, but here arises the difficulty of making the cuttings attach themselves to other objects, which is necessary to their development. And the little animals themselves, they go right on very quietly drinking in water and getting all they need from it—air, food and drink—whether they are off the coast of Europe, Asia, Africa, America or Australia or in a little glass aquarium being looked at through a microscope by a dried-up old man with spectacles and side-whiskers. And we use the sponges.
Maize
The right name of what we call corn or Indian corn is maize. The word is derived from the Spanish word maiz, which comes from the native Haitian word mahiz. Corn in Europe means what we call wheat. Maize, or corn, like all our grains, belongs to the big Grass Family and is a native of America. Most of our other grains come from Europe and Asia, just as we ourselves did. It probably came from the table-lands of Mexico and Peru and has always been the chief food of the Indians. It was introduced into Asia, southern Europe and northern Africa and spread quickly and widely for a while. However, the climate was not hot enough for it in Europe and it is not raised there very much now. The English generally consider it fit only for animals and rather turn up their noses at us for eating it ourselves. The only time I ever saw any offered to an Englishman he was very polite about it but managed to avoid eating even a single mouthful from the nice, tender ears. Other nations are horrified at seeing otherwise well-bred Americans pick up a roasting-ear and gnaw it off the cob, and it must be confessed that it does look pretty bad unless a person is careful to hold it with only one hand and bite it off daintily. Many Americans who travel in Europe miss it terribly and one woman confessed to me that her chief reason for coming home was just to get some real American corn once more. I understand, though, that the English look on our popcorn very differently. It is said that two New England spinsters introduced it over there a number of years ago and their little stand rapidly became so popular that they amassed a very considerable fortune and lived happily ever afterwards. We use sweet corn not only on the cob, for fritters, puddings and so on, as corn-meal and for stock, but extract from it whisky, starch and glucose sugar. Besides sweet corn and popcorn the common kinds are flint and dent. Sweet corn gets its name from the large quantities of sugar in it. Popcorn pops because it has a great deal of oil and this oil explodes when sufficiently hot. Corn varies in color from white to black, but most of it is yellow or white. Like wheat, Government experts and other scientists in this country, Canada and elsewhere have been experimenting with corn for years and by cross-breeding and selection (about which processes I hope the Department will receive some interesting contributions for our June number) they have vastly improved the old varieties and produced many new ones.
When I was a child I remember being much impressed on being told that you never, never could find an ear of corn with an odd number of rows in it. Maybe you can, but I never have been able to, and, as that advertisement says, “there is a reason.”
Can someone tell us for our June Department? You may have heard the story of the Southern planter before the War who offered to give freedom to any slave who could find an ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. None of them could, though it is easy to believe they hunted a good deal, until finally another white man showed one of the slaves how he could cut a row out of an ear when it was very young so as to leave no mark when he presented it and demanded his freedom. The master kept his word and the slave went free.
VARIOUS HINTS.
It was almost equally hard to award the prize for the best general suggestion or recipe sent in. After some careful deliberation, it seemed that, all things considered, the free subscription this month should go to Alicia E. Storm, of Plessis, N. Y., though we hesitated, especially between this and Mrs. Richardson. A little later I hope to be able to send a little souvenir to everyone who sends in a contribution and doesn’t get a regular prize. In case this plan carries out, as I think it will, of course all who have contributed before that time will be remembered. And always there is the gratitude of those who benefit from your suggestion, and my own sincere thanks and your consciousness of having helped other women in their daily trials and perplexities.