Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/743

Rh can be applied. You have before you a glairy, tenacious fluid, which, if not absolutely homogeneous, is yet totally destitute of structure.

And yet no one who contemplates this spontaneously moving matter can deny that it is alive. Liquid as it is, it is a living liquid; organless and structureless as it is, it manifests the essential phenomena of life.

The picture which I have thus endeavored to trace for you in a few leading outlines is that of protoplasm in its most generalized aspect. Such generalizations, however, are in themselves unable to satisfy the conditions demanded by an exact scientific inquiry, and I propose now, before passing to the further consideration of the place and purport of protoplasm in nature, to bring before you some definite examples of protoplasm, such as are actually met with in the organic world.

A quantity of a peculiar slimy matter was dredged in the North Atlantic by the naturalists of the exploring-ship Porcupine from a depth of from 5,000 to 25,000 feet. It is described as exhibiting, when examined on the spot, spontaneous movements, and as being obviously endowed with life. Specimens of this, preserved in spirits, were examined by Professor Huxley, and declared by him to consist of protoplasm, vast masses of which must thus in a living state extend over wide areas of sea-bottom. To this wonderful slime Huxley gave the name of Bathybius Haeckelii.

Bathybius has since been subjected to an exhaustive examination by Professor Haeckel, who believes that he is able to confirm in all points the conclusions of Huxley, and arrives at the conviction that the bottom of the open ocean at depths below 5,000 feet is covered with an enormous mass of living protoplasm, which lingers there in the simplest and most primitive condition, having as yet acquired no definite form. He suggests that it may have originated by spontaneous generation, but leaves this question for future investigations to decide.

The reality of Bathybius, however, has not been universally accepted. In the more recent investigations of the Challenger the explorers have failed in their attempts to bring further evidence of the existence of masses of amorphous protoplasm spreading over the bed of the ocean. They have met with no trace of Bathybius in any of the regions explored by them, and they believe that they are justified in the conclusion that the matter found in the dredgings of the Porcupine and preserved in spirits for further examination, was only an inorganic precipitate due to the action of the alcohol.

It is not easy to believe, however, that the very elaborate investigations of Huxley and Haeckel can be thus disposed of. These, moreover, have received strong confirmation from the still more recent observations of the Arctic voyager Bessels, who was one of the explorers of the ill-fated Polaris, and who states that he dredged from the Greenland seas masses of living undifferentiated protoplasm.