


WHAT IS BATHYBIUS ? 655 
motionless granular jelly investing the objects of beauty 
which it has constructed, but it affords us no indication of 
the secret of its wondrous power. 
We hail every new fact tending to throw light upon a his- 
tory which is as obscure as it is marvellous. Hence the 
importance attached to Professor Huxley's discovery of the 
vast masses of submarine protoplasm, to which he has given 
the name of Bathybius. When, in 1857, Capt. Dayman, of 
H.M.S. Cyclops, returned from his exploration of the bed 
of the Atlantic, some of his specimens of “soundings” were 
placed in the hands of Professor Huxley for examination. 
The explorers had already noticed the singular stickiness of 
the mud brought up by the lead, and Professor Huxley soon 
found that this viscid condition arose from the diffusion 
through it of abundance of sarcode or protoplasm of a proto- 
zoic nature. The mud, like much of what constitutes the bed 
of the Atlantic, consisted of chiefly accumulated shells of 
Globbigerna bulloides — themselves the skeletons of a pro- 
tozoic sarcode. The Bathybius occurred in minute patches 
of gelatinous protoplasm, usually of irregular shape, but oc- 
casionally assuming roundish forms. It consisted of a trans- 
parent jelly containing innumerable, very minute, granules, 
many of which Professor Huxley found to be equally soluble 
in dilute acetic acid and in strong solutions of the caustic 
alkalies; but, in addition, there occurred some remarkable. 
bodies to which great interest is attached. In the first in- 
stance Professor Huxley noticed, adherent to the protoplasm, 
and occasionally embedded in it, numerous minute rounded 
bodies, soluble in acids, and to which he gave the name of 
Coccoliths. Still later, in addition to these Coccoliths, Dr. 
Wallich discovered, associated with the Bathybius, some 
larger spherical bodies of more complex organizations which 
he designated Coccospheres. Yet more recently Professor 
Huxley has reéxamined his specimens under higher powers, 
and found his Coccoliths were of two classes — to which he 
now gives the respective names of Discolithus and Cyatho- 
