r 593 3

I had palled them, to fee them enter into them, and

difappear, being loft in the windings of the tubes.
I thought to have found them again ; but it was a
difficult talk to karch for them. I cruthed them,
or they were themfelves mathed in the tubes, which
I preIrcd, and of which I had confequently fpoilcd
the texture ; but I could not find them ; and this
happened feveral times.
Thele worms have no particular lodge : they walk
indifferently into the tubular labyrinth. So that,
without offence to Pliny and other natoralills, I do
not fee, that it 4 in their power to dilate and conned
the bodies of the fponges ; which lways remain in
the fame ftane of magnitude, without being any
way fenfible to the touch, or any other motion of
the ka, nor to any other accident whatefover, being
an inanimate body ; for the animal fenfitive life, or
whatever you will have it, belongs only to the worms,
that form thek bodies, and which are their dwelling-
places and which, by the (laver or juice they de-
pofit, make the fponge inctrak or grow, as bees,
warps, and efpecially the wood-lice of America, in-
creafe their neat « cells.
Theft fponges, nefts, or cells, arc attached to Come
folid body in the fea. Some kinds are fixed to rocks;
others, as thole I am fpeaking of, are fattened to
heaps of fand, or to pieces of petrified tamer, and
even upou randy Ibottoms ; and the lea putting in
motion the fond, and the little parcels of broken
(hells, forces them into the holes of the fponge
there the land binds and mixes with mucilaginous
juice, and never I. looted front it but when the
fponge 4 well dricd, or with the mucilage when
Vos.. so. G putrified,

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