336 Dr. G. C. Wallich on the true 



being. It has seemed to me that different samples have been 

 different in appearance and consistence ; and although there is 

 nothing at all improbable in the abundance of a very simple 

 shell-less Moner at the bottom of the sea, I think it not impos- 

 sible that a great deal of the ' Bathybius ' (that is to say, the 

 diffused formless protoplasm which we find at great depths) 

 may be a kind of mycelium, a formless condition connected 

 either with the growth or the multiplication, or with the decay, 

 of many different things " ! * 



In the words of Prof. Karl Mobius : — " To suppose that 

 the simplest organisms originate at the bottom of the 

 sea by primitive generation has something very seductive 

 in it. It suits wonderfully well with old cosmogonies 

 and new theories. But we shall never succeed in de- 

 monstrating its occurrence there ; and even if we could 

 methodically produce primitive generation in our laboratories, 

 we could assert nothing further than that perhaps such primi- 

 tive generation may take place at the bottom of the sea"f. 



This is perfectly true, and serves to explain why ad- 

 vanced biologists should have been so eager to hail the 

 alleged " discovery " of an " independent," " living," u inde- 

 finite plasmodium, extending over enormous areas of the sea- 

 bed," as rapturously as Archimedes would have hailed the 

 much-coveted plot of ground from which he pledged himself 

 to move the world. Messrs. Carpenter and Thomson J allege 

 that " there is no difficulty in accounting for the alimentation 

 of the higher animal types with such an unlimited supply of 

 food as is afforded by the Globigerince and the Sponges in the 

 midst of which they live, and on which many of them are 

 known to feed." But they add, with laudable frankness, 

 u Given the Protozoa, every thing else is explicable. But the 

 question returns, — On what do these Protozoa live? " Here was 

 the true Archimedean difficulty revived. Prof. Thomson 

 cuts the Gordian knot after a new fashion when he says §, " It 

 is therefore [?] quite intelligible that a world of animals should 

 live in these dark abysses ; but it is a necessary condition that 

 they should chiefly belong to a class capable of being supported 

 by absorption through the surface of matter in solution, deve- 



* Depths of the Sea, p. 415. 



t " Whence comes the Nourishment for the Animals of Deep Seas ? " hy 

 Prof. Karl Mobius. Translated by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S., from a separate 

 ■copy of the paper sent by the author to Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S. (' Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History,' September 1871, p. 203.) 



J " On the Scientific Exploration of the Deep Sea," by Messrs. Car- 

 penter, Jeffreys, and Thomson, ' Proceedings of the Royal Society,' Nov. 

 18, 18G9, p. 477. 



§ Loc. cit. p. 478. 



