3l8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxil 



But it must be noted that the specimens examined by him 

 and by Haeckel, who two years later published a full and 

 detailed description of Bathybius, were seen in a preserved 

 state. Neither of them saw a fresh specimen, though on 

 the cruise of the Porcupine, Sir Wyville Thomson and Dr. 

 W. Carpenter examined the substance in a fresh state, and 

 found no better explanation to give of it. However, not 

 only were the expectations that it was very widely dis- 

 tributed over the Atlantic bottom, falsified in 1879 by the 

 researches of the Challenger expedition, but the behaviour 

 of certain deep-sea specimens gave good ground for sus- 

 pecting that what had been sent home before as genuine 

 deep-sea mud, was a precipitate due to the action on the 

 specimens of the spirit in which they were preserved. 

 Though Haeckel, with his special experience of Monera, 

 refused to desert Bathybius, a close parallel to which was 

 found off Greenland in 1876, the rest of its sponsors gave 

 it up. Whatever it might be as a matter of possibility, the 

 particular evidence upon which it had been described was 

 tainted. Once assured of this, Huxley characteristically 

 took the bull by the horns. Without waiting for any one 

 else to come forward, he made public renunciation of Ba- 

 thybius at the British Association in 1879.* The " eating of 

 the leek " as recommended to his friend Dohrn Quly 7, 

 1868), was not merely a counsel for others, but was a pre- 

 scription followed by himself on occasion : — 



" As you know, I did not think you were on the right track 

 with the Arthropoda, and I am not going to profess to be sorry 

 that you have finally worked yourself to that conclusion. 



As to the unlucky publication in the Journal of Anatomy and 

 Physiology, you have read your Shakespeare and know what is 

 meant by " eating a leek." Well, every honest man has to do 

 that now and then, and I assure you that if eaten fairly and 

 without grimaces, the devouring of that herb has a very whole- 

 some cooling effect on the blood, particularly in people of san- 

 guine temperament. 



Seriously you must not mind a check of this kind. 



* See vol. ii. p. 5, s^. 



