NOTES ON DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS. 71 



" To this organism, if a being be so called, which shows no 

 trace of differentiation of organs, consisting apparently of an 

 amorphous sheet of a protein compound, irritable to a low 

 degree and 'capable of assimilating food, Professor Huxley has 

 given the name of Bathyhius Haeckelii." 



If this have a claim to be recognised as a distinct living 

 entity, exhibiting its mature and final form, it must be referred 

 to the simplest division of the shell-less Rhizopoda, or if we 

 adopt the class proposed by Professor Haeckel, to the Monera. 



" The circumstance which gives it special . interest to Bathy- 

 bius is its enormous extent ; whether it be continuous in one 

 vast sheet or broken up into circumscribed individual particles, 

 it appears to extend over a large part of the bed of the ocean ; 

 and as no living thing, however slowly it may live, is ever 

 perfectly at rest, but is continually acting and re-acting with its 

 surroundiugs, the bottom of the sea becomes like the surface of 

 the sea and the land — a theatre of change, performing its part 

 in maintaining the ' balance of organic nature.' 



" Entangled and borne along in the viscid stream of Bathyhius, 

 we so continually find a multitude of minute calcareous bodies of 

 a peculiar shape, that the two were long supposed to have some 

 mutual relation to one another. 



" These small bodies which have been carefully studied by 

 Huxley, Sorby, Haeckel, Carter, Grumbel and others, are in 

 shape like oval shirt-studs. There is first a little oval 

 disk about 0.01 m.m. in, length with an oblong rudely facetted 

 elevation in the centre, and round that, in fresh specimens, what 

 seems to be a kind of frill of organic matter, then a short neck, 

 and lastly a second smaller flat disk, like the disk at the back of 

 a stud. To these bodies which are met with in all stages of 

 development, Professor Huxley has given the name of 'coccoliths.' 



Sometimes they are found aggregated on the surface of small 

 transparent membranous balls, and these which seemed at first 

 to have something to do with the production of the ' coccoliths,' 

 Dr. "Wallich has termed ' coccospheres.' " # # # # 



" I think that now the balance of opinion is in favour of the 

 view that the coccoliths are joints of a minute unicellular alga 

 living on the sea surface and sinking down and mixing with the 

 sarcode of Bathyhius, very probably broken into it with a pur- 

 pose, for the sake of the vegetable matter they may contain, and 

 which may afford food for the animal jelly. What the cocco- 

 spheres are, and what relation, if any, they have to the coccoliths, 

 we do not know." ######## 



"I feel by no means satisfied that Bathyhius is the perma- 

 nent form of any distinct living being. # * # # # 



