332 Dr. G. C. Wallich on the true 



desired to elucidate — that is, the mode in which the earliest 

 existing form of animal life manifests itself, and, in the absence 

 of the conditions without which vegetable life of the most 

 primitive kind cannot be present, obtains nutriment, and 

 becomes, in its turn, food for organisms of a somewhat more 

 complex structure." 



It would appear that the analysis of deep-sea mud upon 

 which Prof. Huxley based his original conclusions with regard 

 to Bathybius was made with material which had been pre- 

 served " in spirits " since the year 1857, when it was obtained 

 by Capt. Dayman — that is to say, during a period of nearly 

 eleven years. But, according to Dr. Carpenter's report in the 

 Royal Society's ' Proceedings ' for December 1868, these con- 

 clusions received " remarkable confirmation " on Prof. Hux- 

 ley's examination of mud recently obtained in a dredging, 

 made at a depth of 650 fathoms by Dr. Carpenter and Prof. 

 Wy ville Thomson in the autumn of that year, to the westward 

 of the Faroe Islands, " the coccoliths and coccospheres being 

 imbedded in a living expanse of protoplasmic matter, to which 

 they bear the same relation as the spicules of sponges or of 

 Radiolariaj do to the soft parts of those animals. ... It may 

 be that the Bathybius (which bears a very striking resemblance 

 to the Rhizopod-like mycelium of the Myxogastric Fungi) has 

 so far the attributes of a vegetable that it is able to elaborate 

 organic compounds out of the materials supplied by the medium 

 in which it lives, and thus to provide sustenance for the ani- 

 mals imbedded in its midst "*. 



The drift of these remarks is obvious ; and it was with a view 

 to show their fallacy that I wrote as follows (loc. cit. supra, 

 pp. 39, 40, 41), towards the conclusion of the paper " On the 

 Vital Functions of the Deep-Sea Protozoa," from which the 

 last of my quotations was an extract : — 



" Like most theories which admit of being directed towards 

 the solution of the mystery in which the boundary between 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms has hitherto been shrouded, 

 the idea of a widely pervading protoplasmic layer (drawn, on 

 the one side, from the assumed analogy of Eozoon, and, on the 

 other, from a substance of the exact relations of which we 

 have also still much to learn, namely JEthalium) would merely 

 thrust before us one difficulty instead of another. For, even 

 if we allow the existence of Bathybius as an independent 

 organism, it would still become necessary to invest it with an 

 exceptional specific property — namely, of being able to convert 

 inorganic elements into its own body-substance. 



* " Preliminary Report," by Dr. Carpenter and Prof. Wy ville Thomson 

 ('Proceedings of the Royal Society,' Dec. 17, 1868, p. 191). 



