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New Facts as to Bathybius, Coccoliths, and Coccospheres.— 

 Ernst Haeckel, in a paper published too late for extended 

 notice on this occasion, describes Huxley's Bathyhiiis Haeck- 

 elii — first made known in this Journal in 1868. He gives 

 figures of the network of protoplasm, which is the essen- 

 tial part of Bathybius, and also numerous figures of the 

 Coccoliths, Cyatholiths, Discoliths, and Coccuspheres. In a 

 remarkable new Radiolarian from Lanzarote (Canaries), 

 Haeckel found masses of concretions exactly like the Cocco- 

 spheres, in fact, indistinguishable from them ; and he raises 

 the questions whether these were taken in by the Radiola- 

 rian, or whether the enormous quantities of Coccospheres 

 found in the sea-ooze have come from such Radiolarians (to 

 Avhich he gives the name Myxohrachid), or whether the resem- 

 blance is in fact a proof of identity. He refers to Wyville 

 Thomson's statement that the oceanic ooze was actually alive 

 with a sticky, glairy protoplasm, and is rather inclined to 

 accept Bathybius as one of his Monera, and a most important 

 one, and to leave the question of the source of the Coccoliths 

 still open, than to suppose that the protoplasmic matter and 

 concretions are simply offsets from the siliceous sponges or 

 any other of the sarcodic organisms of the sea bottom. 



Dr. Carpenter, we believe, has not been able to satisfy 

 himself of definite movements in the glairy matter of the 

 Atlantic ooze, such as would be expected from a specific 

 organism as Bathyhius is supposed to be. He thinks the 

 protoplasm may be only that of the various sponges, forami- 

 nifera, and radiolarians, whose hard parts are there in 

 abundance, as well. He has, however, seen little balls of 

 sand or arenaceous matter, held together by protoplasmic 

 matter, which have so definite a shape that they may owe 

 their form to organic origin. Possibly they represent the 

 very simplest form of those sarcode-organisms which avail 

 themselves largely of arenaceous matters in forming a 

 skeleton. 



A new Moneron. — On the coast of Norway, Haeckel ob- 

 served last year the life-history of a new form belonging to 

 his Monera. He proposes to call it Magosplioera, and will 

 shortly describe it in full. It is an aggregation of long 

 flagellate cells, something like one of the Volvocinea in this 

 respect. At a certain stage of growth, the flagellate cells 

 separate, and seeking the bottom of the vessel in which they 

 are kept, draw in their flagellum, which assumes the charac- 

 ters of ordinary protoplasm, and they then move as Amcebce. 

 The conversion of ciliate into pseudopodial locomotion is very 

 interesting and important when we find that Haeckel has 



