20 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



feasible hypothesis yet advanced to account for the 

 existence, by furnishing nourishment, to the vast 

 bulk of minute animal life which has been found to 

 exist in the greatest depths yet reached in the 

 bottom of the " deep, deep sea." 



Remote as may be its connexion with all that 

 follows, still its association with the mysterious 

 depths of the ocean may justify a slight reference 

 here to the controversy concerning the equally 

 mysterious Bathybius^ which, but a short time since, 

 was in the mouth of all who spoke or thought of 

 the bottom of the sea. It was in 1868 that a 

 distinguished naturalist announced the supposed 

 discovery of a new organism, at great depths in the 

 Atlantic, to which he gave the name of Bathybius} 

 Shortly afterwards it was again referred to in a 

 " Preliminary Report " in these terms : u The ex- 

 amination which Professor Huxley has been good 

 enough to make of the peculiarly viscid mud, brought 

 up in our last dredging at the depth of 650 fathoms, 

 has afforded him a remarkable confirmation of the 

 conclusion he announced that the coccoliths and 

 coccospheres are imbedded in a living expanse of 

 protoplasmic substance," and, further, "that there 

 seems adequate reason for regarding this Bathybius 



1 " On Some Organisms living at Great Depths in the North 

 Atlantic," by Professor Huxley, in Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., 

 vol. viii. (1868), p. 203. 



