HO DR. WALLIC&S OBSERVATIONS. 



consolation, and eminently calculated to confirm our faith in 

 the infallibility of the new philosophy, to be able to ponder 

 over the remarkable prophecy by which we learn that the 

 successful neobiologist will not only render evident the 

 wonderful properties now dormant in the existing Bathybius, 

 but, when 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 grain of steam be exposed to a 

 temperature of 25 Fahrenheit during the space of two 

 hours. 



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

 scarcely be said, arrived at a very different conclusion con- 

 cerning the slimy matter christened Bathybius. In a paper 

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

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

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

 kindred studies, states that the coccoliths and coccospheres 

 stand in no direct relation to the protoplasm substance 

 referred to by Huxley under the name of Bathybius. The 

 former are derived from their parent coccospheres, which 

 are independent structures altogether. " Bathybius" instead 

 of being a widely-extending sheet of living protoplasm which 

 grows at the expense of inorganic elements, is rather to be 

 regarded as a complex mass of slime with many foreign 

 bodies and the debris of living organisms which have passed 

 away. Numerous minute living forms are, however, still 

 found on it. 



Dr. Wallich is of opinion that each coccosphere is just 



