The sponge is definitely not a plant,
as some naturalists still believe, but an animal of the lowest order,
a polypary inferior even to coral. Its animal nature isn't in doubt,
and we can't accept even the views of the ancients, who regarded
it as halfway between plant and animal. But I must say that
naturalists are not in agreement on the structural mode of sponges.
For some it's a polypary, and for others, such as Professor Milne-Edwards,
it's a single, solitary individual.
The class Spongiaria contains about 300 species that are encountered
in a large number of seas and even in certain streams, where they've
been given the name freshwater sponges. But their waters of choice are
the Red Sea and the Mediterranean near the Greek Islands or the coast
of Syria. These waters witness the reproduction and growth of soft,
delicate bath sponges whose prices run as high as 150 francs apiece:
the yellow sponge from Syria, the horn sponge from Barbary, etc.
But since I had no hope of studying these zoophytes in the seaports
of the Levant, from which we were separated by the insuperable Isthmus
of Suez, I had to be content with observing them in the waters
of the Red Sea.
So I called Conseil to my side, while at an average depth of eight
to nine meters, the Nautilus slowly skimmed every beautiful rock
on the easterly coast.
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