1895. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 3 



impossible owing to the somewhat crude method of preservation in 

 force twenty-three years ago, and the length of time that many of the 

 objects had to remain in unchanged spirit. Many of the reporters, 

 too, had to do their work without the assistance of the elaborate 

 appliances now found in every laboratory. Other suggestions for 

 future explorations are given in the Narrative. There is, however, 

 one other point that should not be overlooked. Those who originally 

 planned the form that the "Challenger " Report should take can hardly 

 have imagined the length to which it would run. Its size and cost 

 are not such as to predispose "My Lords" to sanction future 

 expenditure on a similar publication. No one questions that the 

 results are worthy of the best paper, printing, and illustrations ; but 

 the promoters of any contemplated work of like nature would be wise in 

 their generation if they were to adopt a less expensive scale and a format 

 more convenient to the desk and book-shelf of the ordinary student. 



Bathybius. 



One of the earliest and most disappointing of the " Challenger " 

 discoveries was that of the true nature of the " Bathybius." Pro- 

 fessor Huxley, while examining deep-water dredgings, taken by 

 Dayman, and preserved in strong spirit, found abundant traces of a 

 grey gelatinous mass, resembling protoplasm in appearance, and con- 

 taining embedded in it numerous minute structures which he called 

 Coccoliths and Rhabdoliths. These were the early days of protoplasm, 

 and Huxley, with a natural enthusiasm, suggested that what he 

 found might be the remains of a primitive living slime, an amorphous 

 mass stretching along the ocean bottom, as a continuous and almost 

 unorganised beginning of life. As we all know now, the " Challenger " 

 naturalists found that Bathybius was a flocculent precipitate formed 

 when strong spirit was poured into sea-water, and that it was not and 

 had not been alive. There was fierce exultation among the enemies of 

 science, who were as delighted as if the whole theory of evolution had 

 tumbled down with the collapse of Bathybius. 



We need hardly point out that the reality or non-reality of 

 Bathybius had no greater importance than that of any isolated 

 zoological fact. So far as naked masses of protoplasm go, the 

 Plasmodia of many of the slime fungi, the naked masses of proto- 

 plasm that creep over tan-bark and decaying organic matter have a 

 theoretical interest as great as a real Bathybius would have had. 

 Moreover, it is at least probable that some Bathybius-like creatures 

 do live on the floors of the oceans. The " Challenger " results have 

 shown that vegetable life does not occur there, that bacteria (at least 

 the bacteria of putrefaction) are absent. Theoretical considerations 

 make it probable that simple organisms devoid of chlorophyll are 

 more primitive than organisms with chlorophyll. It would sur- 

 prise no zoologist were there brought up from the multitude of 



