Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/666

"In this dredging [Globigerina-ooze taken at the depth of 2,435 fathoms in the bay of Biscay], as in most others in the bed of the Atlantic, there was evidence of a considerable quantity of soft gelatinous organic matter, enough to give a slight viscosity to the mud of the surface layer. If the mud be shaken with weak spirits of wine, fine flakes separate like coagulated mucus; and if a little of the mud in which this viscid condition is most marked be placed in a drop of sea-water under the microscope, we can usually see, after a time, an irregular network of matter resembling white-of-egg, distinguishable by its maintaining its outline, and not mixing with the water. This network may be seen gradually altering in form, and entangled granules and foreign bodies change their relative positions. The gelatinous matter is therefore capable of a certain amount of movement, and there can be no doubt that it manifests the phenomena of a very simple form of life."

My own researches on Bathybius-ooze had to do, like those of Huxley, only with dead substance in alcohol. The bottle in which it had been sent to me from the Faroe Islands bore this label: "Dredged of Prof. Thomson and Dr. Carpenter with the steamer Porcupine, in 2,435 fathoms. 22. July 1869.—Latitude 47° 38', longitude 12° 4'." Thus this Bathybius-ooze was the same on which the observers named above had made their investigations of the amœboid movements. The results of my own investigations I have stated fully in my "Beiträge zur Plastiden-Theorie" (II. "Bathybius and the Free Protoplasm of the Sea-Depths," Jenaische Zeitschrift für Naturwissenschaft, 1870, vol v., p. 499, Plate XVII.). The eighty figures I there give of the different formless protoplasm-masses of Bathybius, and of the little calcareous bodies included in the same, were copied with the utmost exactness from very highly-magnified images of those organisms taken with the aid of the camera lucida. Some of the fissures have also been used in my paper on "Life in the Profoundest Depths of the Sea," which was published in 1870, in the Virchow-Holzendorff Collection (No. 110).

This specimen of Bathybius-ooze, which had been very well preserved in strong alcohol, I examined as minutely as possible, employing the newest methods of research, and in particular the excellent method—not employed by Huxley in his investigation—of staining with carmine and iodine, my purpose being, above all, to determine more accurately the quantity and quality of the amorphous protoplasmic matter. This albuminous substance, which was reddened by carmine, was very evenly distributed through the ooze, and in most of the specimens examined constituted at least one-tenth to one-fifth of the whole volume; in many instances it was as much as one-half. The same protoplasmic masses which, on treatment with carmine, became of a more or less deep-red tint, took from iodine and pure nitric acid a yellow color; and with other chemical reagents they exhibited precisely the same properties as the protoplasm of animal and vegetal cells. The form of most of the little masses was irregular, roundish, or provided with obtuse processes resembling those of an Amœba;