BATHYBIUS AND THE M ONERS. 647 



others took the form of irregular reticulations of sarcode, like those 

 of the Myxomycetse. 



Whether the little calcareous frustules coccoliths and cocco- 

 spheres which occur so abundantly in Bathybius-ooze, both within 

 and between the protoplasm-masses, actually belong to it or not, 1 

 was unable to determine, especially as I had already observed the very 

 same kinds of calcareous frustules in the bodies of sundry pelagic 

 Radiolaria which live at the surface of the ocean oiF the Canaries 

 (" Myxobrachia of Lanzarote "). These strange calcareous bodies, 

 occurring now in the form of a simple concentrically stratified disk, 

 again resembling a shirt-button, anon assuming the shape of a sphere 

 made up of several disks, and so on,were as likely to be secretions of the 

 Bathybius sarcode as foreign bodies accidentally (or in the process of 

 taking up food) introduced into the protoplasm. Of late the second 

 hypothesis has come to appear the more probable, and biologists now 

 hold that all these corpuscles are microscopic calcareous algse cal- 

 careate unicellular plants. 



These investigations, confirmed as they have been by sundry other 

 observers, seemed to show that at the bottom of the Atlantic, between 

 the depths of 5,000 and 25,000 feet, there exists a sort of ooze which, 

 with its other characteristics, contains a great quantity of a peculiar 

 and as yet hardly individualized species of Moneres. The error into 

 which we now fell consisted in over-hastily generalizing the results of 

 these deep-sea soundings in the North Atlantic, and supposing the 

 bed of the deep sea to be everywhere covered with similar Moneres. 

 This inference was flatly negatived by later research. During the 

 cruise of the Challenger, which extended over three and a half years, 

 though careful search was made for Bathybius in the depths of various 

 seas, it was nowhere found. We have no ground for calling in ques- 

 tion the diligence and accuracy of the eminent naturalists attached to 

 the famous Challenger Expedition ; and all the less because its director, 

 Sir Wy ville Thomson, had been himself the first to observe the move- 

 ments of the living Bathybius. Hence we must suppose that, in the 

 portions of the deep-sea bottom explored by the Challenger, there 

 were no Bathybius Moneres. But does it hence follow that all previous 

 observations and inferences were incorrect ? 



As is very usual in such cases, exaggerated and one-sided views 

 were at once given up, and no less exaggerated and one-sided contrary 

 views adopted. Once it was supposed that Bathybius occurred in 

 masses at the bottom of every sea ; now its existence anywhere was 

 denied. The Bathybius-ooze preserved in alcohol, which had been the 

 subject of prior investigations, was now held to be nothing but a 

 gypsum precipitate, such as is found wherever sea-water is mixed with 

 spirits of wine. This hypothesis was first put forward by certain 

 naturalists of the Challenger Expedition, and therefore Prof. Huxley 

 recanted prematurely, as I believe his earlier views concerning 



