BATHYBIUS AND THE MONERS. 649 



a critique of this subject. We will endeavor, by impartially weighing 

 the facts, to form an unprejudiced judgment on Bathybias, now so 

 decried and so generally discredited. 



With respect to dead Bathyhlus deep-sea ooze brought from the 

 North Atlantic and preserved in spirits of wine all the observers who 

 have studied it closely agree in saying that it contains greater or 

 smaller masses of coagulated protoplasm, which, in their morphologi- 

 cal and chemico-physical properties, bear the closest resemblance to 

 certain Moneres. The results obtained by Huxley from material ex- 

 amined by him results which I myself have been able to confirm and 

 enlarge have been admitted as correct by all the other observers 

 who studied the same ooze. 



With respect to living Bathyhlus, we have positive testimony as 

 to its characteristic, Rhizopod-like movements from three competent 

 observers, namely, Sir Wyville Thomson, Prof. William Carpenter, 

 and Dr. Emil Bessels. All three made their observations on deep-sea 

 ooze from the North Atlantic. On the other hand, the attempts made 

 by members of the Challenger Expedition in various seas to repeat and 

 confirm these earlier observations on the movement phenomena led 

 only to 7iegative results. 



What follows now from this testimony, all of which we mast rec- 

 ognize as of equal credibility, but which, nevertheless, is self-conflict- 

 ing ? Simply that the Bathybius-ooze has a limited geographical dis- 

 tribution^ and that it was an over-hasty generalization to people all 

 deep-sea abysses with that organism. But from the fact that the 

 Challenger Expedition did not rediscover living Bathybius it surely 

 does not follow that the observations made in other localities by the 

 Porcupine Expedition were faulty. Or, from the fact that the Chal- 

 lenger Expedition found Radiolarian ooze only in a comparatively limit- 

 ed area in the Pacific and nowhere else, must we draw the conclusion 

 that no such thing exists ? We know that the vast majority of organ- 

 ic species have a limited distribution ; why, then, should not the dis- 

 tribution of Bathybius be limited too ? 



Hence I confess I cannot understand why Huxley should have so 

 su<ldenly and so totally changed his views about Bathybius. Still less 

 do I understand how, at the last meeting of the German Naturalists' 

 Association at Hamburg (September, 1876), Bathybius could ever have 

 been publicly interred. In the Berlin Nationalzeitung I find the 

 following notable report (dated Hamburg, September 21st) of a 

 paper by Prof. Mubius, on "Marine Fauna and the Challenger Expe- 

 dition : " 



" Over these plateaus [deep-sea plateaus, from 3,700 to 4,000 feet deep] we 

 should look for the mysterious ' primordial slime,' Bathybius, to which the 

 famous Iluxley gave the name of Bathyhius Haeckelii as a compliment to his 

 genial friend of Jena. But, unfortunately, natural history met with a sad mis- 

 hap. Bathybius, which fitted so nicely into the modern hypotheses of the be- 



