In every museum you may see specimens of a beautiful vase-like
structure seemingly made of spun-glass. This is a flinty sponge, the
"Venus flower-basket," whose presence in the sponge family redeems it
from the charge that it contains no things of beauty whatever. So,
too, the rocks are full of fossil-sponges, many of quaint form. Our
piece of sponge, as we may understand, has yet other bits of history
attached to it.... Meanwhile, think over the sponge and its ways, and
learn from it that out of the dry things of life, science weaves many
a fairy tale.
[Illustration]
THE GREATEST SEA-WAVE EVER KNOWN
(FROM LIGHT SCIENCE IN LEISURE HOURS.)
BY R.A. PROCTOR.
[Illustration]
August 13th, 1868, one of the most terrible calamities which has ever
visited a people befell the unfortunate inhabitants of Peru. In that
land earthquakes are nearly as common as rain storms are with us; and
shocks by which whole cities are changed into a heap of ruins are by
no means infrequent. Yet even in Peru, "the land of earthquakes," as
Humboldt has termed it, no such catastrophe as that of August, 1868,
had occurred within the memory of man.
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