lint. But we are not left, he adds, to mere
conjecture or hypothesis on this point, "for nothing is more common in
chalky districts than to find flints, which, on _being broken, still
contain portions of the original sponge in an almost unaltered state_."

There is every reason to believe that the sponge-fisheries of the AEgean
are at present conducted precisely in the same manner as they were in
the time of Aristotle. The sponge-divers are mostly inhabitants of the
islands which lie off the Carian coast, and of those situated between
Rhodes and Calymnos. These men--who form a distinct society, and are
governed by peculiar laws, which prohibit their marriage until they
shall have attained a prescribed proficiency in their art--go out in
little fleets, composed of caiques, each of six or seven tons' burden,
and manned by six or eight divers: each man is simply equipped with a
netted bag in which to place the sponges, and a hoop by which to suspend
it round his neck; and thus furnished, he descends to a depth of from
five to twenty, or even occasionally thirty fathoms. The sponges which
he collects are first saturated with fresh water, which destroys the
vitality, and decomposing the gelatinous matter, turns it black; this
matter is stamped out by the feet of the divers, and the sponges are
then dried in the sun, and strung in circles, after which they are ready
for sale and exportation.

In a good locality an expert diver may bring up fifty okes in a day, and
for each oke he obtains about twenty-five drachmas. The weight is
calculated, says Forbes, when the sponges are dry, and a very large
sponge may weigh two okes. The chief sponge-markets are Smyrna. Rhodes,
and Napoli.

Blount, who wrote in 1634, affirms that these sponge-divers "are from
infancy bred up on dry biscuites and other extenuatinge dyet, to make
them extreme lean; then takinge a spunge wet in oyle, they hold it, part
in their mouths, and part without, soe they go under water, where at
first they can not stay long, but after practice, the leanest stay an
hour and a halfe, even till the oyle of the spunge be corrupted.... Thus
they gather spunges from more than an hundred fathom deep," &c. All this
is very wonderful, but the narrator stamps the value of his tale by
telling us immediately afterward that "Samos is the only place in the
world on whose rocks the spunges grow." So that, in the words which he
elsewhere makes use of, "we applaude hys belief, but