98 LECTUEES ON BIOLOGY 



ago it was thought that an undoubted case of spontaneous 

 generation had been found in a remarkable structure described 

 by the English zoologist Huxley, the celebrated Bathybius 

 haeckeli. During a survey of the ocean-bed sailors found in 

 the greatest depths of the sea, in abysses between 4,000 and 

 8,000 metres, that the whole bottom of the sea was covered for 

 long distances by a formless mass of non-differentiated, 

 apparently organic slime which executed slow, crawling move- 

 ments. According to Haeckel and other investigators this 

 Bathybius represented a primitive organism, 

 originating permanently at the bottom of the 

 sea by abiogensis. 



Unfortunately this apparently conclusive 

 proof rested on an error. For the celebrated 

 Bathybius is nothing but gelatinous gyp- 

 FIG. 24. Bathybius sum, a sediment of the sea-water, which 

 ma y be artificiall y produced by mixing sea- 

 water with alcohol. With what joy this 

 discovery was hailed in certain circles, and how capital was made 

 out of it against the Theory of Descent is only too well known. 

 Where facts are absent, every little error made by an opponent 

 is used by some people to serve as a weapon with which to 

 beat him. 



It is more for the sake of completeness than because of any 

 particular importance which this observation possesses that 

 I mention the latest attempt to produce life artificially. 

 Eadium, which since its discovery has astonished us with so 

 many remarkable phenomena, is this time the magic wand 

 which is to call forth life. Burke, of the Cavendish Laboratory 

 in Cambridge, who made this discovery, describes it thus : A 

 test-tube with the culture-medium, a nutrient gelatine such as 

 is used for the culture of bacteria, was sterilized in the most 

 careful manner possible. A small quantity of radium salt was 

 then added. After a lapse of twenty-four hours there appeared 

 on the surface a peculiar culture-like structure which during the 

 next fourteen days continued to grow downwards. A casual 

 observer would have taken it for a bacterial growth, but (according 

 to Burke) this assumption was wrong, because the mysterious 

 growth was soluble in water. 



