BATHYBIUS AXD THE M ONERS. 645 



Thomas Huxley, described, in the Journal of Microscopical Science 

 (vol. viii., new series, p. 1, Plate IV.), a new and quite peculiar species 

 of Moneres, giving it the name of Bathyhius Haechelii. Unlike the 

 rest of tlie Moneres, this Bathybius had included in it certain peculiar- 

 ly-formed microscopic, calcareous corpuscles coccospheres and cocco- 

 liths ; but its formless masses of pi-otoplasm, of very diiferent sizes, 

 were said to cover in enormous quantities the profoundest abysses of 

 the sea, from 5,000 to 25,000 feet depth. With this formless primor- 

 dial organism of the simplest kind, which, occurring in thousands of 

 millions, covers the sea-bottom with a living layer of slime, a new 

 light seemed to be thrown upon one of the most difficult and most 

 obscure problems of the history of creation namely, the question of 

 the origin of life upon the earth. With Bathybius, the ill-famed 

 "Urschleim" (primordial slime) appeared to have been found, of 

 which it had been prophetically affirmed, fifty years before, by Oken, 

 that from it was sprung the whole world of organisms, and that this 

 "Urschleim" itself had sprung from inorganic matter at the sea-bot- 

 tom in the course of planetary development. 



The deep-sea ooze containing the masses of Bathybius was first 

 discovered during the deep-sea soundings made in 1857 for the Atlan- 

 tic cable. The Atlantic Telegraph Plateau, which stretches from Ire- 

 land to Newfoundland at a mean depth of 12,000 feet, was found to 

 be covered everywhere with a peculiar gray, very finely-pulverized 

 ooze. This ooze was remarkable for its tough, sticky nature, and under 

 the microscope showed masses of little calcareous-shelled Rhizopods, 

 particularly Globigerinae, and also, as one of its main constituents, 

 those minute corpuscles known as coccoliths. But it was not till 

 eleven years later, in 1868, that Huxley, with the aid of a very power- 

 ful microscope, made a new and thorough investigation of this ooze, 

 calling in also the aid of chemical analysis. He discovered the naked, 

 free, formless protoplasm-masses, which, together with the Globi- 

 gerinre and the coccoliths, make up the great bulk of the ooze. 

 " These masses are of different sizes, some being visible to the naked 

 eye, others extremely minute. Subjected to microscopical analysis, 

 they showed, imbedded in a transparent, colorless, structureless 

 matrix, nuclei, coccoliths, and occasionally foreign bodies." 



Living Bathybius was first observed in 1868, by Sir Wyville Thom- 

 son and Prof William Carpenter, two practised and sagacious zoolo- 

 gists, during a deep-sea exploring expedition to the North Atlantic, 

 in the war-ship Porcupine. Of the living deep-sea ooze they write: 

 "This ooze was actually living; it collected in lumps as though albu- 

 men had been mixed with it ; and under the microscope the sticky 

 mass was seen to be living sarcode " (Annals and 3Iagazine of Nat- 

 ural History, 1869, vol. iv., p. 151) ; and Sir Wyville Thomson, in his 

 very interesting work, "The Depths of the Sea," second edition, 1874, 

 p. 410, adds: 



