34 The Vital Functions of the ["fo^r^t^^y'f^^' 
Professor Huxley, speaking of the " stickiness " of the deep-sea 
mud, says it " contains innumerable lumps of a transparent gela- 
tinous substance. These lumps are of all sizes ( * * * ). When 
one of these is submitted to microscopical analysis it exhibits, 
imbedded in a transparent, colourless, and structureless matrix, 
granules, coecoUths, and foreign bodies." Again, after declaring the 
importance of keeping the questions of fact arising out of such 
an inquiry apart from questions of interpretation, he proceeds to 
inform us that he " conceives the granule-heaps, and the transparent 
gelatinous matter in which they are imbedded, represent masses of 
protoplasm." To these masses of protoplasm he " proposes to give 
the name of Bathyhius ; " and he adds — " From the manner in 
which the youngest JDiscolithi and Cyatholithi are found imbedded 
among the granules ; from the resemblance of the youngest forms 
of Discolithi and the smallest corjouseules of Cyatholithus to the 
granules; and from the absence of any evident means of maintain- 
ing an independent existence in either^' he is led to believe " that 
they are not independent organisms, but that they stand in the 
same relation to the protoplasm of Bathyhius as the spicula of 
sponges or of the Badiolaria do to the soft parts of those animals."* 
Leaving the question as to the nature and significance of 
Bathyhius to be discussed in a future portion of this paper, I have 
to submit my reasons for asserting — firstly, that the free Coccoliths 
met with have invariably been derived, in the first instance, from 
the spherical bodies which were discovered by me, in 1860, in 
soundings from the North Atlantic (and to which I assigned the 
name of Coccospheres, as indicative of their relation to the Coccoliths 
of Professor Huxley) ; and secondly, that the Coccospheres stand in 
no direct relation to the supposed protoplasmic substance which has 
been alluded to. 
Both Coccoliths and Coccospheres were, for the first time, minutely 
described and figured in a paper by me which appeared in the 
' Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' for July, 1861.f They 
had, however, been previously referred to, in my * Notes on the 
Presence of Animal Life at Vast Depths in the Ocean,' published 
immediately after my return from the North Atlantic, in November, 
1860. In the latter paper they are thus alluded to : — " In almost 
every sample of Globigerina ooze these bodies (Coccoliths) have 
* Loc. cit, pp. 205 and 210. 
t The earliest actual notice of the hoclies called Coccoliths was that afforded in 
1858 by their discoverer. Professor Huxley, in some remarks appended to Captain 
Dayman's ' Report on Deep-Sea Soundings.' They were there described as " curious 
rounded bodies, to all appearance consisting of several concentric layers, surrounding 
a minute clear centre, and looking, at first sight, somewhat like single cells of the 
plant Protococcus. As these bodies, however, are rapidly and completely dissolved 
by dilute acids they cannot be organic."— ('Deep- Sea Soundings in the North 
Atlantic, made in H.M.S. Cyclops, by Lieutenant-Commander J, Dayman, 1858,' 
p. 64.) 
