4 BEPORT — 1879. 



Bathybius has since been subjected to an exhaustive examination by 

 Prof. Haeckel, who believes that he is able to confirm in all points the 

 conclusions of Huxley, and arrives at the conviction that the bottom of the 

 open ocean, at depths below 5,000 feet, is covered with an enormous mass 

 of living protoplasm, which lingers there in the simplest and most primi- 

 tive condition, having as yet acquired no definite form. He suggests that 

 it may have originated by spontaneous generation, but leaves this question 

 for future investigators to decide. 



The reality of Bathybius, however, has not been universally accepted. 

 In the more recent investigations of the ' Challenger ' the explorers have 

 failed in their attempts to bring further evidence of the existence of 

 masses of amorphous protoplasm spreading over the bed of the ocean. 

 They have met with no trace of Bathybius in any of the regions explored 

 by them, and they believe that they are justified in the conclusion that 

 the matter found in the dredgings of the ' Porcupine ' and preserved in 

 spirits for further examination was only an inorganic precipitate due to 

 the action of the alcohol. 



It is not easy to believe, however, that the very elaborate investigations 

 of Huxley and Haeckel can be thus disposed of. These, moreover, have 

 received strong confirmation from the still more recent observations of 

 the Arctic voyager, Bessels, who was one of the explorers of the ill-fated 

 ' Polaris,' and who states that he dredged from the Greenland seas 

 masses of living undifferentiated protoplasm. Bessels assigns to these 

 the name of Protobathybius, but they are apparently indistinguishable 

 from the Bathybius of the ' Porcupine.' Further arguments against the 

 reality of Bathybius will therefore be needed before a doctrine founded 

 on observations so carefully conducted shall be relegated to the region 

 of confuted hypotheses. 



Assuming, then, that Bathybius, however much its supposed wide 

 distribution may have been limited by more recent researches, has a real 

 existence, it presents us with a condition of living matter the most 

 rudimental it is possible to conceive. No law of morphology has as yet 

 exerted itself in this formless slime. Even the simplest individualisation 

 is absent. We have a living mass, but we know not where to draw its 

 boundary lines ; it is living matter, but we can scarcely call it a living 

 being. 



"We are not, however, confined to Bathybius for examples of proto- 

 plasm in a condition of extreme simplicity. Haeckel has found, inhabiting 

 the fresh waters in the neighbourhood of Jena, minute lumps of proto- 

 plasm, which when placed under the microscope were seen to have no 

 constant shape, their outline being in a state of perpetual change, caused 

 by the protrusion from various parts of their surface of broad lobes and 

 thick finger-like projections, which, after remaining visible for a time, 

 would be withdrawn, to make their appearance again on some other part 

 of the surface. 



These changeable protrusions of its substance, without fixed position 



