into the hot but obscure flame of
burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to
me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been
the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise
brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear
rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within
our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting
"without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the
endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have
observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally
possessed by the substance of the universe.

[Illustration]

A BIT OF SPONGE

(Written on Scotland.)

(FROM GLIMPSES OF NATURE.)

BY A. WILSON.

[Illustration]

This morning, despite the promise of rain over-night, has broken with
all the signs and symptoms of a bright July day. The Firth is bathed
in sunlight, and the wavelets at full tide are kissing the strand,
making a soft musical ripple as they retire, and as the pebbles run
down the sandy slope on the retreat of the waves. Beyond the farthest
contact of the tide is a line of seaweed dried and desiccated, mixed
up with which, in confusing array, are masses of shells, and such
_olla podrida_ of the sea.

Tossed up at our very feet is a dried fragment of sponge, which
doubtless the unkind waves tore from its rocky bed. It is not a large
portion of sponge this, but its structure is nevertheless to be fairly
made out, and some reminiscences of its history gleaned, for the sake
of occupying the by no means "bad half-hour" before breakfast. "What
is a sponge?" is a question which you may well ask as a necessary
preliminary to the understanding of its personality.

[Illustration: A SPONGE ATTACHED TO ITS ROCKY BED.]

The questionings of childhood and the questionings of science run in
precisely similar grooves. "What is it?" and "How does it live?" and
"Where does it come from?" are equally the inquiries of childhood, and
of the deepest philosophy which seeks to determine the whole history
of life. This morning, we cannot do better than follow in the
footsteps of the child, and to the question, "What is a sponge?" I
fancy science will be able to return a direct answer. First of all, we
may note that a sponge, as we know it in common life, is the horny
skeleton or framework which was made by, and which supported, the
l