The Monthly Mlcroscopicall 
Journal, January 1, 1869. J 
Deejp-sea Protozoa. 
89 
because it appears to me that analogy, and the bulk of direct evi- 
dence, is in favour of the supposition that this widely distributed 
protoplasmic matter is the produci, rather than the source, of the 
vital forces v^hich are already in operation at the sea bed. 
It is true that the evidence afforded by Eozdon may be cited in 
support of Bathyhius. But v^e must not lose sight of the fact that 
of the animal of Eozdon we know as yet extremely little beyond its 
having been recognized by Professor Carpenter as distinctly of a 
Ehizopodous type ; and certainly not enough to warrant the infer- 
ence that its body-substance was less highly differentiated than that 
of an ordinary Foraminifer ; or that each individual, within certain 
limits, may not have been distinct, though inhabiting a structure as 
vast, in its general proportions, as the coral reef. 
But apart from the insufficiency of the evidence on which the 
existence of Batliyhius rests, it appears to me that, even were it to 
be accepted as conclusive, we should not approach a single step 
nearer to the solution of the problem it may be desired to elucidate — 
that is, the mode in which the earliest existing form of animal life 
manifests itself and, in the absence of the conditions without which 
vegetable life of the most primitive kind cannot be present, obtains 
nutriment ; and becomes, in its turn, food for organisms of a some- 
what more complex structure. 
Like most theories which admit of being directed towards the 
solution of the mystery in which the boundary between the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms has hitherto been shrouded, the idea of a 
widely pervading protoplasm-layer (drawn on the one side from the 
assumed analogy of Eozdon, and on the other from a substance of 
the exact relation of which we have also still much to learn, namely, 
(Etlialium) would merely thrust before us one difficulty instead 
of another. For, even if we allow the existence of Batliyhius as an 
independent organism, it would still become necessary to invest 
it with an exceptional specific property — namely, of being able to 
convert inorganic elements into its own body-substance. 
If there really occurs in nature a stage (if it may be so termed) 
at which an exception takes place to the law on which we are accus- 
tomed to base the statement that matter already become organic 
is essential for the sustenance of the life of the animal, it is of little 
moment, so far as the question itself is concerned, whether such ex- 
ception occurs in the case oi Bathyhius, of the Goccosphere, or of the 
Foraminifer. But surely it is the least inconsistent with probability 
to assume that an organism such as a Foraminifer, of whose exist- 
ence there can be no doubt, and which exhibits sufficient differenti- 
ation of its parts at once to stamp it with the attribute of active 
vitality, should be able to eliminate, from the inorganic elements by 
which it is surrounded, the particular ones which enter into the 
composition of its own body-substance. In short, what I seek to 
