72 NOTES ON DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS. 



" I think it not impossible that a great deal of the ' Bathybius? 

 that is to say the diffused formless protoplasm which we find at 

 great depths, may be a kind of mycelium — a formless condition 

 connected either with the growth and multiplication or with the 

 decay — of many different things." 



[The term "Monera" in the above extract means a class formed 

 by Prof. Haeckel (Biologische Studien, Leipzig, 1870) for " a vast 

 assemblage of almost formless beings, apparently absolutely 

 devoid of internal structure, and consisting simply of living and 

 moving expansions of jelly-like protoplasm." {Vide " Depths of the 

 Sea," p. 408.) 



The Monera are the first-class in the first and simplest of the 

 invertebrate sub-kingdoms, — the Protozoa ; the other two classes 

 being the Rhizopoda and the Sponges. Of these, says Professor 

 W. Thomson (op. cit. p. 409), "The Monera pass into the Bhizo- 

 poda, which give a slight indication of advance, in the definite 

 form of the graceful calcareous shell-like structures which most 

 of them secrete, and the two groups may be taken together."] 



