50 HUXLEY 



of a viscid, granular substance which had been 

 dredged from the bottom of the Atlantic in 1868. He 

 had expressed the opinion that this deposit was a 

 living form of very low type, and in this faith, and as 

 a compliment to Haeckel, had named it Bathybius 

 Haeckelii. 1 But it turned out that what seemed to be- 

 long to the group of simplest living things was only a 

 precipitate, probably due to its haying been preserved 

 in spirit. 2 There was an impression, confined, how- 

 ever, to superficial critics, that Huxley had regarded 

 Bathybius as a hitherto missing link between the 

 living and the not-living, and they rejoiced doubly ; 

 first, in his discomfiture as possibly weakening his 

 authority, and next, in the blow dealt, as they hoped, 

 to the theory of the unity of the cosmos. But, as he 

 told them, when admitting the error, 



that which interested me in the matter was the 

 apparent analogy of Bathybius with other well-known 

 forms of lower life. . . . Speculative hopes and 

 fears had nothing to do with the matter; and if 

 Bathybius were brought up alive from the bottom 

 of the Atlantic to-morrow, the fact would not have 

 the slightest bearing, that I can discern, upon Mr. 

 Darwin's speculations, or upon any of the disputed 

 problems of biologv. It would merely be one ele- 

 mentary organism the more added to the thousands 

 already known. 3 



1 Scientific Memoirs, iii. p. 337. 2 I. 295, 446 ; II. 5, 160. 



3 Coll. Essays, v. p. 154. 



