When we first capture a live sponge from the sea it has a slimy, dirty appearance, and is very heavy. The sponge is found to be filled with a glutinous substance that is the fleshy part of the animal. It is very soft and jelly-like, and after the sponge is dead it is readily squeezed out, by a process which is called "taking the milk out," which leaves simply the skeleton, the only useful part as an article of commerce. This fleshy substance, in life, has somewhat the appearance and composition of the white of an egg. The mechanical process by which the sponge takes its nourishment is exceedingly interesting. There are small globe-shaped cells with openings through them that are lined with little hairlike projections that move in such a manner as to suck the water in at one side of the cell and push it out at the other. These little fibers are technically called "cilia." We might describe them as little suction pumps that are located at many points in the sponge, all acting conjointly to produce a circulation through the finer openings or capillary vessels and finally discharging into the larger chambers which carry off the residue. If we should analyze the water as it is sucked into the sponge and that which issues from it through the larger openings, we should find a difference between the two. The expelled water would contain more or less carbon dioxide. There are many different varieties of sponge, and, while they all possess certain characteristics in common, they are still very different in many respects. Some of them are large and coarse, while others are exceedingly soft and velvety. What is called a single sponge is a colony of animals rather than a single animal; at least they are so regarded by zoölogists. This can hardly be true if we regard the sponge itself as a part of the animal. If the sponge is simply regarded as the house in which the animal lives then it becomes a great tenement with numerous occupants. But it is a tenement upon which the life of the sponge depends, and is a part of it. The sponge could not breathe without the fibrous structure in the cells containing the machinery for producing the circulation. It will be seen that the sponge, while it is an animal, is of the very simplest variety, so far as its organs are concerned. True, its framework is very complicated, but the organs for sustaining the life of the animal are the simplest possible. The little self-acting pumps pull the water into the sponge through the smaller openings, where it appropriates the food substance from the water and where a chemical action takes place which builds up the fleshy substance of the animal, and then expels the residue which is not needed to support its life.