Note 89 — THE FORMS AND COLOURS OF LIVING CREATURES.

Here reference may be made to the name Bathybius, which was given by Professor Huxley to a material found at the sea bottom, of great extent and indefinite shape, and which was supposed by him to be the remains of a mass of once living protoplasm, but which there is much reason now to suppose was really but inorganic material. Reference is here made to this, because some persons seem to imagine that if Bathybius were a lowly animal some important speculative consequences would follow. But this is an utter mistake. It is generally admitted already that there are living structureless protoplasmic organisms of no definite shape, and of which detached particles can live and grow. It would make no real difference whatever to the known facts of life if a creature of the kind should be found as large as the Pacific Ocean, with its portions exceptionally detachable and its shape irregular in the extreme.