24 PROTOPLASM. 



mined by them. As in other cases, this matrix, with the 

 living matter included, constitutes " protoplasm." 



Bathybius has been fancifully described as " a vast sheet 

 of living matter (!) enveloping the whole earth beneath the 

 seas," composed of molecules whose organizing tendencies 

 will be shown after the lapse of several thousand years in 

 the Fauna and Flora of the period of which the unscientific 

 cannot now form the remotest conception. But it is surely a 

 consoling thought, and one eminently calculated to confirm 

 our faith in the infallibility of the new philosophy, to re- 

 member the remarkable prophecy that the successful neo- 

 biologist is not only to render evident the wonderful proper- 

 ties now dormant in the existing Bathybius, but as soon as 

 he shall have succeeded in demonstrating to us the properties 

 of the molecules which once formed the primitive nebulosity, 

 he will be able to predict the exact state of the Fauna and 

 Flora of Middlesex in the year 5069, and with as much 

 certainty as he can now tell us what will happen if exactly 

 one thousand grains of proteid organic matter be exposed, 

 in an atmosphere of carbonic acid to a temperature of 25 

 during the space of two hours. 



Dr. Wallictts Observations. Dr. Wallich has, it need 

 scarcely be said, arrived at a very different conclusion. In a 

 paper " On the Vital Functions of the Deep-sea Protozoa," 

 published in No. I. of the " Monthly Microscopical Journal," 

 January, 1869, this observer, who has long been engaged in 

 this and kindred studies, states that the coccoliths and cocco- 

 spheres stand in no direct relation to the protoplasm sub- 

 stance referred to by Huxley under the name of Bathybius. 

 The former are derived from their parent coccospheres, 



