this horn-like sheath is coated with a fine silicious powder, just as it would look if made of India-rubber, and while in the soft, adhesive condition dusted over with fine sand. With so much told, we are prepared for the curious scientific history of this interesting object, which bears a number of popular names, such as Glass-Plant, Glass-Coral, Glass-Rope, etc.
When the scientific men of Europe first made acquaintance with it, this object was an enigma, and for years the subject of much learned controversy. In 1835, some specimens, brought by the traveller Von Siebold, received special study by Dr. John E. Gray, of the British Museum, who named the object Hyalonema Sieboldi. On one point, to use a legal phrase, "each and every" of these learned men literally lost his head when studying this apparent abnormal nondescript; for they all alike stood the specimens on their heads, that is, they placed them, for study, theoretically upside down, namely, with the conical sponge heads, or masses, downward, and of course the coils of silica standing up. It must have been that the Japs themselves started this notion, in honest ignorance, as I believe; for in some natural-history engravings, done by native artists, which are now before me, these objects are portrayed, with the thread-like ends upward, and the sponge mass downward, and as if adhering to something (Fig. 2). This is curious, as the Japanese exhibit in their drawings a closeness in the observation of details that is almost scientific.[1] Dr. Gray's position made the sponge to grow on some object, or on the bed of the sea, and out of the sponge-mass so adhering, like a glass brush standing on its
- ↑ I am indebted to our Japanese students at New Brunswick for an explanation of the words on Fig. 2. They are the popular names of these objects in Japan. The cut gives three representations of Hyalonema, the Japanese Glass Rope Sponge. The middle one of them in the original has the fascicles, or bundles of silicious threads, colored red, while the others are white. They are also represented as growing crowded together, some six or more in a group. The Conical Sponge masses, too, are flattened, as if they were adhering at the base to a rock. The fascicles, too, are naked, like the specimens that Japanese ingenuity has prepared for market; that is, they are devoid of any encrusting polyp case or bark. It is evident that the artist has drawn upon the popular understanding of the subject, and his own inner consciousness. The one with the red fascicles, the color being probably the outcome of a lively imagination, has the Japanese name Akahossz. The word hossz means a brush of long white hair, such as is used by the Buddhist priests, and is derived from the adjective hosoi, meaning fine, thin, delicate. Aka means red. The others, which have the usual white fascicles, are named hoshi-kai. The words hoshi and hossz seem to be interchangeable, as they are identically the same, but are changed in the spelling for some reason not apparent. Hoshi, then, means a brush of long white hair, and kai means a small bivalve. The word has that general applicacation to mollusks and crustaceans which seems to carry with it the significance of our popular word shell-fish. The common name, then, of the Glass-Rope Sponge, in Japan, would seem to be the Shell-fish with the brush of white hair, or the Long-white-haired Shell-fish: and, as we have the anomalous expression, a white-blackbird, so the Japanese have the Red White-haired Shell-fish. Of course, no claim is here set up for philological accuracy, although the above is believed to be sufficiently correct for the purpose in hand.
S. L.
