Nature uf the so-called" Bathybius." 331 



u Regarding tlic expediency of attempting to establish a new 

 grade of animal life possessing characters as yet so obscure 

 and indefinite as that on which Prof. Huxley has conferred the 

 name Bathybius, I beg with great deference to express my 

 doubts : — in the first place, because T can see no reason to deny 

 to the structure called a coccosphere, quite as independent 

 an individuality as is observable in Thalassicolla or Collo- 

 spheera ; in the second, because the very name Bathybius, 

 if its substance is supposed to have any immediate connexion 

 with the presence, the development, or the nutrition of the 

 lower forms of animal life which inhabit the ocean, is in direct 

 antagonism to the occurrence of surface-living forms, for the 

 nutrition and development of which a separate provision would 

 have to be made ; and, in the third and last place, because it 

 appears to me that analogy and the bulk of direct evidence is 

 in favour of the supposition that this widely distributed 

 protoplasmic matter is the product, rather than the source, 

 of the vital forces which are already in operation at the 

 sea-bed." 



" It is true that the evidence afforded by Eozoon may be 

 cited in support of Bathybius. But we must not lose sight of 

 the fact that of the animal of Eozoon Ave know as yet ex- 

 tremely little beyond its having been recognized by Professor 

 Carpenter as distinctly of a Rhizopodous type*, and certainly 

 not enough to warrant the inference that its body-substance 

 was less highly differentiated than that of an ordinary Fora- 

 minifer, or that each individual, within certain limits, may 

 not have been distinct, though inhabiting a structure as vast, 

 in its general proportions, as the coral reef." 



" But, apart from the insufficiency of the evidence on which 

 the existence of Bathybius rests, it appears to me that, even 

 were it to be accepted as conclusive, we should not approach 

 a single step nearer to the solution of the problem it may be 



this fact, viewed in connexion with the recently demonstrated and admitted 

 validity of my disproof of the existence of " Bathybius" is at all consistent 

 with the established rules of scientific inquiry and discussion. 



* In the same number of ' The Monthly Microscopical Journal/ at pp. 

 GO, 61 , the following- statement is given on the authority of Dr. Carpenter : — 

 " Dr. Carpenter then referred to the protoplasmic network which Prof. 

 Huxley had termed Bathybius, and which, as Dr. Wallich had stated, 

 was limited to the warm area, and not found where the arctic currents 

 prevailed." This statement (for which I do not hold Dr. Carpenter re- 

 sponsible) is wholly incorrect, and in direct antagonism to the opinions I 

 have throughout entertained and expressed regarding u Bathybius." No 

 remark has, at any time, been made bv me with reference to the distribu- 

 tion of the so-called " Bathybius." The assertion here conveyed must 

 evidently, therefore, have originated in some misconception of the writer's. 



