Excerpt from Half Hours With a Naturalist: Rambles Near the Shore Now, however, all these minute beings have been proved to belong to the Simplest forms of vegetable life, and the Locomotive Theory had to be abandoned. Among the beings which occupy the border-land be tween the animal and vegetable kingdoms, the sponges have of late years started into prominence. Relegated at first to the vegetable, but now conclusively proved to belong to the animal kingdom, the sponges are full of interest to the student of zoology. With the sponge of commerce we are all familiar enough, and it is scarcely necessary to state that it con Sists of the horny Skeleton alone, the whole of the organic matter having been removed. This organic matter is apparently nothing but a mere wash or film of gelatinous substance covering every filament of the Skeleton but when carefully examined it presents a most remarkable mixture of simplicity and complica tion. Without entering into the purely scientific details Of sponge-structure, I will endeavour to lay open some of the wonders which are hidden in one of the lowest forms of animal life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.