324 Dr. G. C. Wallicli on the trice 



first Scientific Societies of Great Britain, were well calcu- 

 lated to be accepted — and, as a matter of fact, are well known 

 to have been accepted — by nearly all the leading biologists of 

 the day, both in this country and abroad ; whilst they neces- 

 sarily served to block out entirely, and, as events have 

 proved, to throw discredit upon any attempt to controvert 

 them. How far the circumstances warranted such results, 

 the facts about to be narrated will doubtless attest. 



Prof. Huxley's paper announcing the discovery of " Bathy- 

 bius " appeared in ' The Quarterly Journal of Microscopical 

 Science' in 1868*. In that paper Prof. Huxley says, "I 

 conceive that the granule heaps and the gelatinous matter in 

 which they are imbedded, represent masses of protoplasm. 

 Take away the cysts which characterize the Radiolaria, and 

 a dead Spkcerozoum would very nearly resemble one of the 

 masses of this deep-sea ' Urschleim,' which must, I think, 

 be regarded as a new form of those simple animated beings 

 which have recently been so well described by Haeckel in his 

 1 Monographic der Moneren.' . . . From the manner in which 

 the youngest Discolithi and Cyatholitlii\ are found imbedded 

 among the granules, from the resemblance of the youngest 

 forms of Discoliihi and the smallest corpuscles of Cyatholithus 

 to the granules, and from the absence of any evident means 

 of maintaining an independent existence in either, I am led 

 to believe that they are not independent organisms, but that 

 they stand in the same relation to the protoplasm of Bathy- 

 bius as the spicula of sponges, or of the Radiolaria, do to the 

 soft parts of those animals "J. 



Here, then, we are furnished with a description, meagre 

 indeed, but nevertheless the sole description which, so far as 

 I am aware, Prof. Huxley has published of Bathybius. It 

 will be seen from it that the varieties of " coccoliihs " spoken 

 of under the name of " discoliths " and " cyatholiths " were 



* " On some Organisms from Great Depths in the Atlantic," by Prof. 

 Huxley, F.R.S. (Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Oct. 1868, 

 no. xxxii. p. 210). 



t Names given by Prof. Huxley to varieties of " coccoliths^ 

 \ Prof Huxley having stated, in confirmation of the accuracy of his 

 observations, that he had " employed higher powers of the microscope 

 when he examined the North-Atlantic mud, than subsequent observers 

 seem to have employed, his great help having been an excellent T L by 

 Ross, which easily gives a magnifying-power of 1200 diameters and renders 

 obvious many details hardly appreciable with the } objective he used in 

 1857," I may be permitted to mention that all my work has been done 

 with Ross's lenses, ranging up to 1 L ) and a Hartnack's immersion-lens, 

 No. 10, specially made for me. These lenses cannot be surpassed in de- 

 fining-power. As most microscopists know, perfect definition is a quality 

 of much greater consequence than simple amplification. 



