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“What if we could cool him down quicker? If he came to himself even for a minute, you could talk to him! Why don’t we put him in the bathtub? It’d soak him cool a lot quicker than all that spongin’.

“You ain’t got to ast’m. You jest got to let’m. Soon as he gits over the chill, y’all go’n be spongin’ him off night and day.

The skeleton of sponges, when it is not composed wholly of spongin, consists of, or at any rate contains, spicules that have a definite chemical composition and definite shapes in accordance with the class, order, family, genus, and species of the sponge.

The amount of spongin present is also different in different species.

The spongin that binds the skeleton-spicules together takes the form of a colourless or yellowish transparent membrane, which is often practically invisible.