74 DR. WALLICH ON THE PHYSICAL 



regard to this substance, I must bring to my aid the descrii) lions 

 given of it, the grounds upon which it had been pronounced by one 

 eminent geologist and chemist to be not even of organic derivation, 

 but an accidentally formed chemical product, and, lastly, the 

 evidence furnished (strange to say, by those biologists who were the 

 foremost to affirm its existence as a veritable " Moneron ") iu support 

 of my contention that it is nothing more than sponge-protoplasm. 



In 1868 Drs. Carpenter and Wyville Thomson wrote as follows : — 

 " The remarkable abundance of sponges, which not improbably 

 derive their nutriment from the protoplasmic substance (Bathybius) 

 that enters so largely into the composition of the calcareous mud 

 wherein they are imbedded, is a preeminently conspicuous feature 

 of resemblance" between the mud and the chalk — a resemblance 

 so striking, in their opinion, as to have led them to declare the mud 

 to be not merely a chalk formation, but a continuance of the Chalk 

 formation *. 



According to Sir Wyville Thomson, " The Vitreous Sponges, along 

 with the living Rhizopods and other Protozoa which enter largely 

 into the composition of the upper layer of the chalk-mud, appear to 

 be nourished by the absorption, through the external surface of these 

 bodies, of the assimilable organic matter which exists in appreciable 

 quantity in all sea-water, and which is derived from the life and 

 death of marine animals and plants, and in large quantity from the 

 water of tropical rivers "t. 



"This calcareous mud is the home of multitudes of exquisitely 

 formed glassy and other siliceous Sponges ; the chalJc, on the other 

 hand, may be said to contain no disseminated silica luhatever, beyond 



a few grains In one haul of the dredge, in the soft, 



warm, oozy, chalk- mud, were brought up upwards of forty specimens 



of vitreous sponges, many of which were new to science 



This mud was entirely filled with the delicate siliceous root-fibres of 

 the sponges, binding it together like hairs in mortar. It was actually 

 alive ; it stuck together in lumps, as if there were white of egg 

 mixed with it ; and the glassy mass proved, under the microscope, to 

 be living sarcode. Prof. Huxley regards this as a distinct creature, 

 and calls it Bathybius. I think this requires confirmation":!:. 



According to Dr. Carpenter and Sir "Wyville Thomson, " It seems 

 highly probable that, at all periods of the earth's history, some form 

 of the Protozoa (Ehizopods, Sponges, or both) predominated over all 

 other forms of animal life in the depths of the sea, whether spreading, 

 compact, and reef-like, as in the Laurentian and PalEeozoic Eozoon, 

 or in the form of myriads of separate organisms, as in the Globige- 

 rince and the Ventriculites of the Chalk "§. 



In 1870 Prof. Huxley described Bathybius as " forming a living 

 scum or film on the sea-bed, extending over thousands upon 



^ Proc. Eoy. Soc. no. 107, 1868, p. 192. 



t " On Holtenia, a Genus of Vitreous Sponges," Proc. Roy. Soc, June 18G9. 

 + " On the Depths of the Sea," by Prof. W. Thomson, F.R.S. A paper 

 communicated to the Ann. & Ma/s;. Nat. Hist, for Aug. 1869, pp. 119-121. 

 § 3id. p. 124. 



