The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 32

"Then a sponge doesn't seed itself, like a plant?"

"No, Mr. Murren," said Colin; "so far as I understand, the larvae, though of a very simple type, have a certain amount of choice. A seed has got to grow where it falls, or not at all, but a sponge larva, if it doesn't find a suitable place on the first thing it touches, can swim about blindly until it finds one that will do."

"Now about these sponges, Colin," his host said, impressed by the boy's clear though crude way of explaining himself, "look through the gla.s.s and tell me what you think about the bed."

"There are quite a lot of sponges there," the boy answered after a few minutes' examination, "some of good size, too, but a number of them are dead. See, the sand has drifted half over them. There's too much sand and too little rock."

"Should they have a rock bottom?" the manufacturer queried.

"Rock am de bes', suah," the owner of the ground put in, "but a li'l bit o' san' don' do no hahm. It shows dat de wateh am runnin'."

"Yes," said the boy, "the boatman is right there, Mr. Murren, sponges must be in a current after they have once taken hold. They can't swim around to get their food, so, like all the fixed forms of life, their food must come to them. If there is no current there is not enough food carried past for them to live on. If the current is too strong the sponge has to make an extra tough skeleton to brace itself against the rush of water and then it becomes too coa.r.s.e for commercial use. Some of the polyps live on tiny animals with a lot of flint in their sh.e.l.ls and the skeleton gets like gla.s.s. They call them gla.s.s sponges. Conditions have got to be just right for their development, they're a most particular sort of creature."

"But how do they feed?"

"A sponge is a jelly-like colony of cells with a fibrous skeleton," the boy explained; "the outside of him is toward the water and is full of small pores which branch all through his flesh and open at last into a big pore leading to the outside. All these pores are lined with tiny hairs that make a current of water go through the jelly-like flesh, which absorbs any microscopic life there may be. The water is taken in through the little pores and sent out through the big ones. Some sponge forms are of one animal, most are of colonies. But they are all on the same pattern, pumping water in and out again."

"Then is a growing sponge all full of jelly?" asked Paul.

"All that I have seen are," Colin replied.

"How do they get it out?"

"I c'n tell you 'bout that," interjected Pete. "A sponge is all slimy an' nasty. Yo' put him in de sun an' he dies quick an' all de slime runs out. Den yo' buries him in san' 'til his insides all decay. Den you puts him in a pon' an' takes him out, an' beats him wif a stick, lots o'

times oveh, maybe, 'til all de jelly an' all de san' an' all de muck am out ob him. Den yo' wash him in fresh wateh 'til he's clean an' lets him dry an' he's done."

"But if sponges will reproduce themselves," the capitalist said, returning to his former point, "what is the need of planting them?"

"You don't have to work that way on their own beds, sir," the boy answered, "planting is done to get more out of the industry, using the sea bottom in shallow waters which now is lying unused."

"And you say only rocky land will do?"

"Any bottom that's hard enough to keep the sponge from being covered up, Mr. Murren. Soft sand will wash, mud will ooze up, and rank marine gra.s.s or seaweed will smother the young cells. But any hard bottom in warm salt water with a current is good for sponges."

"I see," was the rejoinder. "As you say, the situation is not unlike farming. You can either farm cultivated sponge land or plant uncultivated land."

"You can get land suitable for sponges for almost nothing, I suppose,"

Colin said, "and then if you had a small sponge ground you could plant a larger area from it."

"What do you think of this ground?"

The boy hesitated.

"I hardly think I know enough about it to say, Mr. Murren," he said; "you ought to get an expert."

"I'll get an expert before I pay cash," was the prompt answer, "but I want to know what you think."

"Well, then, sir," Colin answered, "I think it's good ground, but not good enough."

"Ah got a betteh one than this hyeh, boss," put in the boatman, "it's mah brotheh's, but he might be willin' to sell. Costs mo' than mine, though."

"Take us there," ordered the capitalist.

The boatman took to his oars with a will, but it was a long pull, almost an hour elapsing before he stopped, wiped his forehead on his arms, and said, as before:

"Lots o' sponges hyeh, boss."

At a nod from the prospective buyer, Colin took the water gla.s.s and watched the bottom carefully as the boatman rowed slowly over it. How the boy wished for the lenses in the gla.s.ses belonging to Mr. Collier which he had used in Bermuda! But still, though the afternoon was drawing on and the sun did not strike the water at the right angle, Colin could see that it was unusually fine sponge ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YOUNG SPONGE ATTACHED TO CEMENT DISK, READY FOR PLANTING.

(Actual size.)

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHEEPSWOOL SPONGE GROWN FROM SMALL PIECE AS ABOVE, 48 MONTHS OLD, SIX INCHES ACROSS.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

"Yes," he said, "that's more like."

Mr. Murren looked about him.

"How in the world do you know, Pete," he said to the boatman, "that this is your ground or anybody else's? I don't see any stakes or evidences of owners.h.i.+p."

"If Ah starts to haul up sponges on somebody else's groun' he'll come up and make me get off, suah," replied the boatman.

"But suppose he doesn't see you."

The boatman grinned.

"Dat certainly am his own lookout, boss," he said.

"What a cut-throat game," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the would-be buyer. "If a man bought a place he'd have to watch it all the time, then?"

"Suah, sah."

"Thank you," was the reply, "I'll take some place in shallow water where I can build a house and hire some fellow to watch it and work it."

"Ain' no trouble hyeh," the boatman said, shrugging his shoulders, "ev'body wo'k his own patch."

"But how do you get the sponges?" was the query. "You have to dive for them, don't you?"

The boatman shook his head.

"Sometimes, if de wateh's mo' than fifty feet deep. Not of'en. See, Ah show you."

He reached under the forward thwart and pulled out a light three-p.r.o.nged hook and fitted it to a jointed pole, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the two sections together so that it made one long pole of about twenty-four feet in length. He took the water gla.s.s and rowed the boat until it was directly over a sponge.