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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the Microscopical Journal of 1868, in 

 which his conclusions are stated : 

 "Such, so far as I have been able to 

 determine them, are the facts of struct- 

 ure to he observed in the gelatinous 

 matter of the Atlantic mud, and in the 

 coccoliths and coccospheres. I have 

 hitherto said nothing about their mean- 

 ing, as, in an inquiry so difficult and 

 fraught with interest as this, it seems 

 to be in the highest degree important 

 to keep the questions of fact and the 

 questions of interpretation well apart." 



Again : "I conceive that the gran- 

 ule-heaps and the transparent gelatin- 

 ous matter, in which they are imbed- 

 ded, represent masses of protoplasm. 

 Take away the cysts which characterize 

 the radiolaria, and the dead spherozonm 

 would very nearly resemble one of the 

 masses of this deep-sea Urschleim, which 

 must, I think, be regarded as anew form 

 of those simple animated beings which 

 have recently been so well described 

 by Haeckel, in his 'Monographic der 

 Moneren.' I propose to confer upon 

 this new monera the generic name of 

 Bathybius, and to call it after the emi- 

 nent Professor of Zoology in the Uni- 

 versity of Jena, B. HaeckeliV 



This modest and cautious statement 

 is the whole of the announcement of 

 Bathybius. It is made by a scientific 

 man in the true spirit of science, and 

 when the Rev. Mr. Cook charges Hux- 

 ley with " haughtiness " in regard to it, 

 his statement has no value except as an 

 exemplification of the trustworthiness 

 of his book. "What the nature of the 

 evidence was for the existence of this 

 protoplasmic substance at the bottom 

 of the sea will appear from the follow- 

 ing statements : 



Those eminent zoologists, Sir AVy- 

 ville Thomson and Dr. William 13. Car- 

 penter, while engaged in a deep-sea ex- 

 ploring expedition in the North At- 

 lantic with the war-ship Porcupine, had 

 abundant opportunity to examine the 

 ooze of the ocean-bed, and they write 

 in the Magazine of Natural History 



(1869), " This ooze was actually living ; 

 it collected in lumps, as though albu- 

 men had been mixed with it ; and un- 

 der the microscope the sticky mass was 

 seen to be living sarcode." The pro- 

 toplasmic character of this simplest- 

 formed materia] of low animal life was 

 still further attested by Sir Wyville 

 Thomson in his "Depths of the Sea" 

 (page 410, second edition, 1874) : " If a 

 little of the mud, in which this viscid 

 condition is most marked, be placed in 

 a drop of sea-water under the micro- 

 scope, we can usually see, after a time, 

 an irregular network of matter resem- 

 bling white of egg, distinguishable by 

 its maintaining its outline and not 

 mixing with the water. This network 

 may be seen gradually altering in form, 

 and entangled granules and foreign 

 bodies change their relative positions. 

 The gelatinous matter is, therefore, ca- 

 pable of a certain amount of movement, 

 and there can he no doubt that it mani- 

 fests the phenomena of a very simple 

 form of life." 



Dr. Emil Bessels, who accompanied 

 the expedition of the Polaris, writes to 

 a German journal of natural history : 

 " I found in Smith Sound, at the depth 

 of ninety-two fathoms, great masses 

 of free, undifferentiated homogeneous 

 protoplasm," which he names Proto- 

 bathybius. He adds: "I would simply 

 say, in this place, that these masses 

 consisted of pure protoplasm, in which 

 calcareous particles occurred only by 

 accident. They appeared to be very 

 sticky, mesh-like structures, with per- 

 fect amoeboid movements ; they took 

 up particles of carmine and other for- 

 eign substances, and there was active 

 motion of the nuclei." 



And now, to nullify the effect of 

 such direct, positive, and concurrent 

 observations made and verified, again 

 and again, by experienced men, what 

 have we? Only this: the ship Chal- 

 lenger started around the world to 

 dredge the sea-bottom, and its observ- 

 ers sought Bathybius and did not find 



