56 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



In his book " The Depths of the Sea," Wyville Thomson 

 speaks of it as " the universally distributed Moner of deep 

 water," and gives an excellent figure of it with its amoeboid 

 protoplasm and its contained Coccoliths. 



The Bathybius myth had for a time a great vogue — 

 particularly in Germany. Theoretically it was beautiful, 

 it explained so much, but unfortunately on the " Challenger " 

 it came in contact with hard facts of experiment and at once 

 succumbed. It was proved that when a certain quantity of 

 strong alcohol was added to a certain quantity of sea-water, 

 the sulphate of lime was precipitated in the form of an 

 amorphous deposit which clung around any particles, such 

 as sand grains, mud, or the minute shells of an ooze, and 

 gave exactly the appearances under the microscope which 

 had been supposed to indicate the presence of protoplasm 

 in the submarine deposit. Thus, as Huxley once said, 

 " Bathybius has not fulfilled the promise of its youth," but 

 from the experiments of the " Challenger " naturalists has 

 been shown to be simply the sulphate of lime in the sea-water 

 of the ooze precipitated by the alcohol which was added for 

 preservation purposes. 



There were great and widespread hopes and expectations 

 amongst scientific men that the " Challenger " explorations 

 would result in the discovery of many ancient and primitive 

 types, belonging to extinct groups, still living in the great 

 depths of the ocean. These hopes were not realised to any 

 great extent. No Trilobites, no Cystoids and Blastoids, no 

 archaic connecting links comparable in morphological import- 

 ance with such land or shallow water forms as Ornithorhynchus, 

 Amphioxus, Balanoglossus, Peripatus, Apus or Limulus have 

 been found in the depths of the ocean ; and the accepted 

 view now is that the deep sea animals are not for the most 

 part early and primitive forms, but have been derived from 

 the more ancient shallow water faunas. There are compara- 



