SCIENCE AND THE BISHOPS. 365 



thusiasts, "whose faith in me has so far exceeded the bounds of reason, 

 should be set right. But that " want of finish " in the matter of ac- 

 curacy which so terribly mars the effect of the " Great Lesson," is no 

 less conspicuous in the case of the " Little Lesson," and, instead of set- 

 ting my too fervent disciples right, it will set them wrong. 



The Duke of Argyll, in telling the story of Bathyhius, says that 

 my mind was " caught by this new and grand generalization of the 

 physical basis of life." I never have been guilty of a reclamation 

 about anything to my credit, and I do not mean to be ; but if there 

 is any blame going, I do not choose to be relegated to a subordinate 

 place when I have a claim to the first. The responsibility for the 

 first description and the naming of Bathyhius is mine and mine only. 

 The paper on " Some Organisms living at Great Depths in the Atlantic 

 Ocean," in Avhich I drew attention to this substance, is to be found by 

 the curious in the eighth volume of the " Quarterly Journal of Micro- 

 scopical Science," and was published in the year 18G8. Whatever er- 

 rors are contained in that paper are my own peculiar property ; but 

 neither at the meeting of the British Association in 1868, nor any- 

 where else, have I gone beyond what is there stated ; except in so far 

 that, at a long subsequent meeting of the association, being impor- 

 tuned about the subject, I ventured to express, somewhat emphatically, 

 the wish that the thing was at the bottom of the sea. 



What is meant by my being caught by a generalization about the 

 physical basis of life I do not know ; still less can I understand the 

 assertion that Bathyhius was accepted because of its supposed har- 

 mony with Darwin's speculations. That which interested me in the 

 matter was the apparent analogy of Bathyhius with other well-known 

 forms of lower life, such as the plasmodia of the Myxomycetes and 

 the Rhizopods. Speculative hopes or fears had nothing to do with 

 the matter ; and if Bathyhius were brought up alive from the bottom 

 of the Atlantic to-morrow, the fact would not have the slightest bear- 

 ing, that I can discern, upon Mr. Darwin's speculations, or upon any 

 of the disputed problems of biology. It would merely be one ele- 

 mentary organism the more added to the thousands already known. 



Up to this moment I was not aware of the universal favor with 

 which Bathyhius was received.* Those simulators of an " ignorant 

 mob " Avho, according to the Duke of Argyll, welcomed Darwin's 

 theory of coral reefs, made no demonstration in ray favor, unless his 

 Grace includes Sir Wyville Thomson, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Bessels, and 

 Professor Ilaeckel under that head. On the contrary, a sagacious 

 friend of mine, than whom there was no more competent judge, the 



* I find, moreover, that I specially warned my readers against hasty judgment. 

 After stating the facts of observation, I add, " I have, hitherto, said nothing about their 

 meaning, as, in an inquiry so difficult and fraught with interest as this, it seems to me to 

 be in the highest degree important to keep the questions of fact and the questions of 

 interpretation well apart." 



