Huxley, Haeckel, and the Oceanographers: The Case of Bathybius haeckelii
Author(s): Philip F. Rehbock
Source: Isis, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 504-533
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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Huxley,
Haeckel,
and
The
Oceanographers:
Bat
hybius
the
Case
of
haeckelii
By Philip F. Rehbock*
INTRODUCTION
AT
THE NORWICH MEETING of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1868, Thomas Henry Huxley announced
the results of his microscopical examination of some specimens of North Atlantic
bottom sediment. Among the constituents of these seemingly unexciting specimens Huxley had found some curious "granule-heaps," surrounded by extensive
masses of viscous matter, which he described variously as "lumps of a transparent,
gelatinous substance" and a "colourless, and structureless matrix."' Tests of
the substance convinced Huxley that he was dealing with a new type of organism
in the form of virtually undifferentiated protoplasm. He gave the organism
the generic name Bathybius, after its oceanic habitat, and called the species
B. haeckelii, after his friend and fellow champion of Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel.
Bathybius haeckelii was to live a brief but eventful life of some seven years.
In 1875 the scientists aboard H.M.S. Challenger, then nearing the end of their
epochal voyage for the establishment of the new science of oceanography,
discovered that Bathybiuswas nothing more than an inorganic precipitate. Despite
his obvious embarrassment, Huxley readily admitted his error. Haeckel, however,
who had applauded Huxley's original discovery, would not give up so easily.
For him Bathybiuswas both an important member of his new class of unicellular
organisms, the Monera, and a keystone in his mechanistic philosophy of life.
Received May 1974: revised/accepted June 1975.
*Department of General Science, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. I am greatly
indebted to Professor Camille Limoges of the Institut d'Histoire et de Sociopolitique des Sciences,
Universite de Montreal, who suggested the topic of this study and whose inspiration and criticisms
were essential at each stage of the research. I would also like to thank Professor William Coleman
of the History of Science Department and Professors Jeremy B. C. Jackson and Steven M. Stanley
of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, The Johns Hopkins University, for their careful
reading and comments. I also wish to thank the National Science Foundation for support of
this study. An abbreviated version of the paper was presented at the Joint Atlantic Seminar
for the History of Biology on April 7, 1973. This paper was awarded the 1974 Henry Schurman
prize of the History of Science Society.
'T. H. Huxley, "On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths in the North Atlaritic Ocean,"
Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 1868, N.S. 8:203-212 (p. 205). See also T. H. Huxley,
"On Some Organisms which Live at the Bottom of the North Atlantic, in Depths of 6000 to
15,000 Feet," Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1868, p. 102.
504
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
505
Another decade would pass before he would abandon Huxley's creation.
Previous narrations of the Bathybiusstory have been characterized by a brevity
and jocularity which obscures the seriousness of the controversy and the zeal
of the debators. To be sure, there is a comical tone to the affair, deriving
from the comments of the participants, especially Huxley, and from the subject
matter itself (reminiscent of stories of sea serpents and other abyssal curiosities).
But there is also a grave aspect, manifested in the immense efforts expended
on laboratory investigations, ocean dredgings, and publications in scientific
journals, all in behalf of a nonexistent organism.
Loren Eiseley has called Bathybius "one of the most peculiar and fantastic
errors ever committed in the name of science."3 At first sight it may seem
strange that some of the most distinguished biologists of the nineteenth century
should have been allied with such a "fantastic" error. Professor Eiseley claims
it to be "the product of an over-confident materialism, a vainglorious assumption
that the secrets of life were about to be revealed."4 This analysis is incomplete,
however, for it lays the blame on a philosophical predisposition while ignoring
the unique sequences of events in several scientific disciplines whose timely
convergence made Bathybius"'discovery" possible.
Bathybiuswas simultaneously a candidate for the lowliest form of protozoological life, the elemental unit of cytology, the evolutionary precursor of all higher
organisms, the first organic form in the fossil record, a major constituent
of modern marine sediments, and a source of food for higher life forms in
the otherwise nutrient-poor deep oceans. Among biological entities Bathybius
was probably unsurpassed in the variety of scientific specialties from which
confirmation seemed forthcoming. Its eventual refutation came from outside
this group of specialties, from the knowledge and techniques of chemical analysis.
The present study attempts to trace out the full course of Bathybius' birth,
development, and demise, emphasizing the complex milieu of scientific theories
which allowed the "organism" its brief existence.
PRENATAL CONDITIONS OF BATHYBIUS
The idea that life on earth arose originally in the sea is one of the oldest
speculations of natural history. Variations on this theme appear in the philosophy
of the Milesian Anaximander5 and more recently in the speculative biology
of the NaturphilosopheLorenz Oken (1779-1851). Oken believed that life began
as a primitive mucous substance which evolved from inorganic constituents
existing in shallow marine waters. He equated the individual vesicles of this
mucus with the smallest organisms known at the time, the infusoria. All other
2E.g., Susan Hubbard, "Beer, Bologna and Bathybius," Oceans, 1969, I(No. 3):23-26.
'Loren Eiseley, The Imm itseJourney (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), pp. 34-35.
4 Ibid. The prevalence of this spirit of the maturity of science in the latter half of the nineteenth
century has been discussed in a suggestive essay by Lawrence Badash, "The Completeness of
Nineteenth-Century Science," Isis, 1972, 63:48-58.
5John Burnet, Early GreekPhilosophy(3rd ed., London: A. C. Black, 1920), pp. 7071.
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506
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
organisms, according to Oken, were made up of, were "metamorphoses" of,
these infusoria.6
Oken's writings, though mystical in tone and erroneous in many details,
were strikingly anticipatory of later developments in biology, including the
cell theory of Schleiden and Schwann and the protoplasm theory which followed
it.7 The early history of these theories has been well described elsewhere.8
For present purposes it should be recalled that by mid-century the initial
conception of the cell, a unit characterized by a definite boundary or cell
wall, was being questioned and new light was being cast on the nature of
the cell's contents. Franz Unger's demonstration of the identity of the cell
substances of plants ("sarcode") and animals ("protoplasm") in 1850 initiated
an era of intensive protoplasmic research.
The decade of the 1860s witnessed the most intensive investigations and
speculations about protoplasm. Two events of particular interest marked the
beginning and the end of this decade. In 1861 the German microscopist Max
Schultze (1821-1874) published his essay "Uber Muskelk6rperchen und dass
was man eine Zelle zu nennen habe,"9 in which he described his examination
of membraneless protoplasm in marine invertebrates. Schultze's work convinced
most scientists that the truly essential portion of the cell was not its outer
membrane but its contents, the protoplasm and nucleus.'0 And in 1868 T. H.
Huxley, by then a protoplasm devotee himself, placed the protoplasmic theory
before the public in his famous lecture "On the Physical Basis of Life." "'
Huxley's lecture generated much interest because, along with his strong
support of the protoplasmic theory and its physicochemical basis, he brought
serious criticisms against both vitalists and positivists. 12 In his espousal of
protoplasm Huxley failed to mention, however, that in an earlier essay he
6Lorenz Oken, The Elenents of Physiophilosophy,trans. Alfred Tulk (London: Ray Society, 1847),
pp. 185-189. The 1st German ed. (Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie) appeared in 1809. See also
Lorenz Oken, Die Zeugung (Bamberg: Joseph Anton Goebhardt, 1805), p. 2.
7Oken pointed out these relationships himself in the preface to the 3rd ed. of his Lehrbuch
(1847), pp. xi-xii.
8See John R. Baker, "The Cell Theory: A Restatement, History and Critique," Q. J. Micros.
Sci., 1948-1955, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96; William Coleman, "Cell, Nucleus, and Inheritance: An Historical
Study," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1965, 109:124-158; Gerald L. Geison,
"The Protoplasmic Theory of Life and the Vitalist-Mechanist Debate," Isis, 1969, 60:273-292;
Arthur Hughes, A History of Cytology(London: Abelard-Schuman, 1959).
9Max Schultze, "Uber Muskelkorperchen und dass was man eine Zelle zu nennen habe," Archiv
fur Anatomie, Physiologieund wissenschaftlicheMedizin, 1861, pp. 1-27.
'0Geison ("Protoplasmic Theory," p. 276) states that "the publication of this paper, more than
any other single event, marked the birth of the protoplasmic theory of life." Erik Nordenski6ld
(The History of Biology, New York: Knopf, 1928, p. 404) goes even further, claiming that Schultze's
work "laid the foundations on which cell research has since been built, and this marks a new
era in the science of cytology."
"T. H. Huxley, "On the Physical Basis of Life," Fortnightly Review, 1869, N.S. 5:129-145. I
have used the republication of this essay in T. H. Huxley, et al., Half-Hours with Modern Scientists
(New Haven, Conn.: Charles C. Chatfield, 1871), pp. 7-35.
'2One of Huxley's most vocal opponents in the vitalist-mechanist controversy was the London
microscopist and Kings College professor of physiology Lionel S. Beale (1828-1906). Beale countered
Huxley's "Physical Basis" in his Protoplasm, or Life, Matter and Mind (London: J. Churchill and
Sons, 1870). Geison ("Protoplasmic Theory," pp. 285-290) discusses this controversy at length.
See also Sydney Eisen, "Huxley and the Positivists," Victorian Studies, 1964, 7:337-358.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
507
had argued for a much different conception of the cell, one which emphasized
the cell membrane ("periplast") at the expense of the intracellular material
("endoplast"). This argument appeared in his 1853 review of cytological research,
"The Cell-theory." 13 Thus, sometime between 1853 and 1868 Huxley's ideas
on the fundamental nature of the cell made a full turnabout.
There is apparently no direct evidence of how or when Huxley's reversal
came about. Perhaps he was convinced by Schultze's work of 1861 or by the
German mycologist Anton de Bary's researches on the membraneless mycetozoans (slime molds) published in 1864.14 It is also possible that he changed
his mind as a result of his discovery of the purely protoplasmic Bathybius
in the summer of 1868. In any case the timing of events testifies that Bathybius
must at least have given confirmation to his change of mind, for it was only
three months after his announcement of its discovery to the British Association
that he lectured "On the Physical Basis of Life." In the intervening fifteen
years since "The Cell-theory" he had published nothing on the subject of
cells, his principal concerns having been vertebrate palaeontology and the
defense of Darwinism.
If Bathybiusappeared in some minds to be the culmination of half a century
of cytological research, it was seen as the conclusion of an even longer period
of investigations in protozoology. The earliest attempt to describe and systematically classify those life forms which exist at or below the threshold of human
vision was that of the Dane Otto Frederik Muller (1730-1784). Muller's
Animalcula infusoria fluviatilia et marina,'5 published posthumously in 1786,
represented the "state of the art" at the time Oken wrote of his infusorial
mucous vesicles. The nineteenth-century researches of Christian Ehrenberg,
Felix Dujardin, and Karl von Siebold greatly refined infusorial conceptions
and classifications, and by 1845 unicellular organisms of irregular form and
simple organization were referred to as the Protozoa.'6
At the protozoan level of complexity the difficulty of differentiating between
plant and animal soon became obvious. Ernst Haeckel encountered this problem
'3T. H. Huxley, "The Cell-theory," British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, 1853, 12:221243. This was apparently the first instance of Huxley's going astray in cytology, Bathybius being
the last. In the 1853 essay Huxley not only clung obstinately to the importance of the cell wall,
while others were realizing that it was not an essential constituent; he also abandoned the nucleus
as a significant factor, although it was well accepted and had been since the 1840s. See Baker,
"Cell Theory," 1949, Part II, 90:106. For reasons unknown, the date of "The Cell-theory" has
been confused, though there can be little doubt that the correct year was 1853. The Royal Society
Catalogue of Scientific Papers and Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of ThtomasHenry Huxley (New
York: D. Appleton, 1900), Vol. I, p. 152, both give the year as 1858.
14Heinrich Anton de Bary, Die Mycetozoen(Schleimpilze) (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1864). See Baker,
"Cell Theory," Part II, 90:97. Huxley mentioned de Bary in the "Hunterian Lectures on the
Invertebrata," Q. J. Micros. Sci., 1868, N.S. 8:126-129, 191-202 (p. 127).
150. F. Miller, Animalcula infusoria fluviatilia et marina (Hanniae, 1786).
'6Nordenskibld (History of Biology, pp. 426-430) treats this period of protozoology in some
detail.
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PHILIP F. REHBOCK
in his Generelle Morphologieder Organismen (1866) and solved it by establishing
a third kingdom, the Protista, for the questionable, unicellular organisms.'7
The Generelle Morphologie was Haeckel's first attempt to found a taxonomy
of nature upon evolutionary principles. His taxonomy took the form of
genealogical trees (Stammbaume), with man at the apex and the Protista at
the base. One of Germany's most zealous evolutionists, Haeckel believed that
the unicellular organisms were the foundation of all higher forms of life and
that their study was therefore of critical importance. His first monograph,
on the planktonic Radiolaria, was based on these conceptions and secured
him a professorial post at Jena in 1862.18 Subsequently extending the roots
of his Stammbaumetoward organisms of greater and greater simplicity, Haeckel
created the class Monera of the Protista. The Monera included the lowliest
forms of life, lacking in nucleus and exterior membrane: "an entirely homogeneous and structureless substance, a living particle of albumen, capable of
nourishment and reproduction." 19
Huxley had read and applauded the Generelle Morphologie and had even
expended considerable effort, fruitlessly, to have it translated into English.20
He was not entirely convinced about the Protista, however. In the Hunterian
Lectures, early in 1868, his opinion was that some of the Protista were decidedly
plants and others animals. Only the Monera were acceptable as "intermediate
ground," such as the organism Haeckel had named Protogenes:"The simplest
bit of living matter possible," whose lack of a nucleus "proves the absence
of any mysterious power in 'nuclei' and shows that life is a property of the
molecules of living matter, and that organization is the result of life, not life
the result of organization." 21
Haeckel pursued his researches on the Protista throughout the 1860s in
the belief that he was at the same time closing the gap between cytology and
protozoology. In the spring of 1868, barely a few months before Huxley was
to discover Bathybius, Haeckel published his "Monographie der Moneren," an
elaboration of the class established in the Generelle Morphologie. The seven
species of Monera which had been described up to that time were of interest,
Haeckel claimed, because of the completely structureless homogeneity of the
substance composing them and, more importantly, because of the similarity
of this substance to the protoplasm of all plant and animal cells. Haeckel
had been a firm proponent of the protoplasm theory and was delighted that
his Monera gave it additional support:
The Protoplasmor Sarcodetheory, that is, that the albuminouscontents of animal
and vegetable cells (or more correctly, their "cell-matter"),. . . are identical, and
Ernst Haeckel, GenerelleMorphologieder Organismen(Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1866), pp. 198-206.
Ernst Haeckel, Die Radiolarien (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1862).
I)Ernst Haeckel, "Monographie der Moneren," Jenaische Zeitschriftfur Medicin und Naturwissenschaft, 1868, 4:64. I have employed the translation by W. F. Kirby and E. P. Wright, Q. J. Micros.
Sci., 1869, N.S. 9:27-42, 113-134, 219-232, 327-342 (p. 28).
20Georg Uschmann and Ilse Jahn, eds., "Der Briefwechsel zwischen Thomas Henry Huxley
und Ernst Haeckel," WissenschaftlicheZeitschrift der Universitht Jena (Math.-Nat. Reihe), Jg. 9
(1959/1960), H. 1/2, p. 13.
21 Huxley, "Hunterian Lectures on the Invertebrata," pp. 126-127.
17
18
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
509
that in both cases this albuminous material is the original active substratum of
all vital phenomena may perhaps be considered one of the greatest achievements
of modern biology, and one of the richest in results. ... By no phenomenon
is the correctness of this theory so thoroughly proved, and, at the same time,
in so simple and unassailable a manner, as by the vital phenomena of the Monera,
by the processes of their nourishment and reproduction, sensitiveness and motion,
which entirely proceed from one and the same very simple substance, a true "primitive
slime." 22
Not surprisingly, the Monera were to become Bathybius' closest relatives.
And Huxley's recent acquaintance with the "Monographie der Moneren" was
undoubtedly responsible, at least in part, for his ability to see Bathybius as
a living organism. But for Haeckel, Bathybiushad a more momentous implication
(an implication which occurred to Huxley but which he never accepted publicly):
the possibility that it arose by spontaneous generation out of inanimate matter
on the ocean floor.
Of the various theories which formed a background for the acceptance of
Bathybius, the idea of spontaneous generation had probably the longest, most
eventful history. John Farley has recently provided new clarity in our understanding of the spontaneous generation controversy by emphasizing that two
distinctly different concepts were involved and often were confused by scientists
and later by historians of science.23 From the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries "spontaneous generation" usually referred to the apparent
development or "heterogenesis" of intestinal worms, infusorians, yeasts, bacteria,
and certain insects within an organic environment where no such organisms
were thought to have been previously present. By the mid-nineteenth
century
the researches of J. J. S. Steenstrup, Ehrenberg, Pasteur, and many others
had convinced most scientists that the need to invoke heterogenesis had been
eliminated. At the same time a second meaning of spontaneous
generation
was becoming increasingly common, namely "abiogenesis," or the evolution
of living organisms out of inorganic matter.24 The popularity of this notion,
first in Germany (1860s) and then in Britain (1870s), derived its energy chiefly
from Darwinism and from the German preoccupation
(inherited from the
earlier Naturphilosophie) with a Weltanschauung or universal system of knowledge.
Darwin was able to provide a mechanistic explanation for the diversity of
organisms and their alteration through time, but as to the source of the first
primitive organisms on earth, he refused to comment. Here Haeckel entered
the picture. He insisted that the complete mechanistic Weltanschauung demanded
an abiogenetic starting point as an a priori necessity. And he set out in search
22
Haeckel, "Monographie der Moneren," pp. 223-224.
John Farley, "The Spontaneous Generation Controversy (1700-1860): The Origin of Parasitic
Worms," Journal of the Histoiy of Biology, 1972, 5:95-125, and "The Spontaneous Generation
Controversy (1859-1880): British and German Reactions to the Problem of Abiogenesis," J. Hist.
Biol., 1972, 5:285-319.
24 Abiogenesis continues to be the subject of speculation and experiment in the twentieth century.
Well-known works include A. I. Oparin, The Origin of Life (New York: Macmillan, 1938), John
Keosian, The Origin of Life (New York: Reinhold, 1964), S. L. Miller, "A Production of Amino
Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions," Science, 1953, 117:528-529.
23
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510
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
of ever-simpler protozoans, hoping to narrow the gap between life and nonlife.25
The simpler the organism, the smaller the gap between it and its abiotic
environment, and thus the easier to conceive of a bridging of the gap by
a purely chemical process of spontaneous generation or "archegony." With
his work on the Protista and then the Monera, Haeckel saw the gap closing:
. . . the acceptation of a genuine archegony (once or repeated) has at present
become a logical postulate of scientific natural history. Most naturalists who have
discussed this question rationally believed that they must designate simple cells
as the simplest organism produced thereby, from which all others developed
themselves. But every true cell already shows a division into two different parts,
i.e., nucleus and plasm. The immediate production of such an object from
spontaneous generation is obviously only conceivable with difficulty; but it is much
easier to conceive of the production of an entirely homogeneous, organic substance,
such as the structureless albumen-body of the Monera.26
With his pedigree of the natural world now extending down to the Monera,
the next logical step Haeckel hoped for in his research was the discovery
of the on-going formation of living protoplasm in the Monera from strictly
nonliving matter. Such a discovery was not only desirable for the sake of
biological completeness; it was essential to Haeckel's monistic philosophy and
his struggle against the vitalist conception of nature. Within a few months
of his publication of the "Monographie der Moneren" Haeckel's biological
and philosophical aspirations were to be triumphantly fulfilled, though only
temporarily, by Huxley's Bathybius.
The role of Bathybius in protozoology, cytology, and abiogenesis gave it a
position of credibility for biologists. The immediate source of its discovery,
however, was not biology but the study of marine geology, then becoming
active in Britain. Since the 1850s there had been a growing interest, especially
among the British, in the acquisition of bathymetric data for the purpose
of laying telegraph cables. A spin-off from the new technology of sounding
the depths was the collection of small bottom samples via the sounding device.
One of the most common constituents of these samples was the calcareous
shells of the protozoan group known as foraminifera, mainly of the genus
Globigerina. Early studies of these organisms had been made by Christian
Ehrenberg in Germany and by Jacob Whitman Bailey in the United States,
but no one was able to state decisively whether these foraminifera lived on
the bottom or merely fell there from the surface after their death. Ehrenberg
251t is especially interesting that Haeckel chose to find the missing evolutionary links by a
study of existing life forms rather thap fossil forms. He was, of course, trained as a biologist,
not as a palaeontologist. But more important, he may have considered the study of fossilized
microorganisms unduly difficult and even unnecessary, if, as he believed, these same organisms
were still being spontaneously generated at the present time (see below).
26Haeckel, "Monographie der Moneren," p. 30.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
511
believed them to be benthic-that is, bottom dwellers- while Bailey regarded
them as planktonic.27
In the summer of 1857 Huxley, then palaeontologist at the London School
of Mines, looked forward to receiving some fresh data on the Globigerina
question. H.M.S. Cyclops, under the command of Captain Joseph Dayman,
had just completed a line of soundings from Great Britain to Newfoundland
and back, in preparation for a cable laying. Huxley had earlier supplied the
ship's medical officer with instructions for obtaining, observing, and preserving
whatever deposits might be brought up by the sounding device. In his instructions
Huxley drew special attention "To the preservation of the freshly brought
up soundings in a tolerably strong alcoholic mixture, so that the presence
or absence of soft parts in them might be determined at any future time,
and under more convenient circumstances." 28 The use of alcohol as a preservative (a practice dating back to Robert Boyle 29) was, on the one hand, a reasonable
precaution, as there was no opportunity to examine the numerous samples
aboard ship. On the other hand, alcohol was to become one of the chief culprits
in the generation of Bathybius,as will shortly be seen.
The samples reached Huxley in the autumn of 1857. His preliminary
examination of them was published as an appendix to Captain Dayman's report
of the results of the soundings.30 Huxley's examination had been only a
superficial one, apparently just enough to permit the preparation of a report
to the hydrographer of the Admiralty, who had sanctioned the collection.
As Huxley stated in the report, "I am desirous of briefly laying their results
before you, reserving for a future occasion the communication of the full
details, and of the illustrations, which, in accordance with the authorization
of the Admiralty, I am now having prepared to accompany them.'
In his initial examination Huxley found the samples to be uniformly composed
of "an excessively fine, light brown, muddy sediment." Microscopic inspection
revealed large amounts of foraminifera, "fully nine-tenths, as I imagine, by
weight." Although he was unable to determine with certainty whether they
were normally bottom dwellers or not, he was, like Ehrenberg, inclined to
27
Margaret Deacon, Scientists and the Sea, 1650-1900 (London: Academic Press, 1971), p. 297.
For a contemporary account of the foraminifera question, see Matthew Fontaine Maury, The
ed. John Leighly (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Physical Geography of the Sea and its MHeteorology,
Press, 1963; from the 8th ed., 1861), pp. 297-304. The belief that foraminifera did not and
could not live at the bottom of the sea was based in part on the "azoic zone" hypothesis, suggested
in the 1840s by Edward Forbes (1815-1854). The leader of Britain's proto-oceanographers in
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Forbes theorized that the diminishing quantity
of bottom fauna at greater and greater depths indicated that no life existed below approximately
300 fathoms. The azoic-zone hypothesis is discussed at length in Ch. V of my Ph.D. dissertation,
"Organisms in Space and Time: Edward Forbes (1815-1854) and New Directions for Early Victorian
Natural History" (The Johns Hopkins University, 1975).
28Joseph Daymnan, Deep-Sea Soundings in the North Atlantic made in H.M.S. "Cyclops"in June
and July, 1857 (London: H.M.S.O., 1858), p. 63.
29Robert Boyle, "A Way of Preserving Birds taken out of the Egge, and Other Small Foetus's,"
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1666, 1:199-201. See also Hughes, History of Cytology,
p. 14.
30Daymnan,Deep-Sea Soundings, App. A, pp. 63-68.
31 Ibid., pp. 63-64.
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PHILIP F. REHBOCK
believe that they were. In addition to the predominance of foraminifera in
the samples, Huxley noted considerable quantities of "curious rounded bodies
. . . looking at first sight somewhat like single cells of the plant Protococcus."
Since these minute particles were easily dissolved by acid, Huxley decided
they could not be organic; ". . . I will, for convenience sake, simply call them
Coccoliths."32 The Coccoliths were to have an interesting and error-ridden
history and a controversial relationship to Bathybius.
For reasons not fully clear, Huxley set aside these bottom samples for over
ten years. Presumably he was satisfied that little else was to be gained by
further study with his existing instruments; and other projects of higher
precedence, notably his defense of Darwin's theories, were soon to place heavy
demands on his time. Nevertheless, his observations, though buried in Dayman's
report, were not altogether ignored by other microscopists. In 1861 the London
physician and marine enthusiast George Charles Wallich (1815-1899) published
several articles on his deep-sea dredging experiences of the preceding year.33
Wallich noted "great numbers" of the Coccoliths Huxley had described but
found that they existed, not only in the free state observed by Huxley, but
attached to the outer surface of spherical bodies "in such a manner as to
leave no doubt of that being their normal position."34 Wallich thought these
bodies, which he named "Coccospheres," were the larval form of some type
of foraminifer. He claimed, moreover, that when the outer shell of the
Coccosphere was crushed it was found to contain a protoplasmic substance,
"a homogeneous, gelatinous, and almost colourless matter, exhibiting no visible
trace of organization, and, in all probability, consisting of sarcode. The wall
of the cell may be distinctly seen under a high power; but from the minuteness
of the entire structure, I have hitherto found it impossible to do more than
attest its existence."35
Little more was heard on the subject of Coccoliths and Coccospheres36 until
Huxley gave his reknowned lecture "On a Piece of Chalk," in 1868. In that
lecture, presented to working men at Norwich during the British Association
meeting, Huxley eloquently demonstrated the identity of the chalk deposits
to present deep-sea mud. This was an opportunity to bring together, for the
layman, the discoveries of Coccoliths and Coccospheres and to reiterate his
32 Ibid., p. 64.
33Wallich accompanied H.M.S. Bulldog during her soundings between the Faroe Islands,
Greenland, and Labrador. He published a full account of his findings in The North Atlantic Sea-Bed:
Comprising a Diary of the Voyage on Board H.M.S. "Bulldog" in 1860 (London: John Van Voorst,
1862).
34G. C. Wallich, "Remarks on Some Novel Phases of Organic Life, and on the Boring Powers
of Minute Annelids, at Great Depths in the Sea," Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1861,
3rd Ser., 8:52-58 (pp. 52-53). (I have not been able to examine Wallich's first work on this
subject, "Notes on the Existence of Animal Life at Vast Depths in the Ocean," published privately
in 1860.)
35Wallich, "Remarks," p. 53.
36In 1865 Wallich reported he had found Coccospheres "free-floating in tropical seas," but
this important observation, mentioned only in a footnote to an article on another subject, seems
to have been missed by his contemporaries. G. C. Wallich, "On the Structure and Affinities
of the Polycystina," Transactions of the MicroscopicalSociety, 1865, N.S. 13:57-84 (p. 81).
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
513
views on the benthic habitat of Globigerina. Huxley added that he had recently
studied the Coccoliths a second time, convincing himself that "they are produced
by independent organisms, which, like the Globigerina, live and die at the
bottom of the sea."37 The "independent organismn"alluded to was his newly
found Bathybiushaeckelii.
Yet another organism, not mentioned by Huxley but of much greater antiquity
than the chalk deposits, was shortly to become allied with Globigerina and
Bathybius.The "dawn animal of Canada," Eozoo'ncanadense, extended the time
dimension of Bathybius back to the Precambrian and gave scientists of North
America a role in Bathybius' history. The Eozoo'ngeological configuration, a
complex layering of limestone and serpentine, had been discovered in 1858
in the Laurentian limestones of Canada.38 The case for its organic origin was
not pursued until 1864, when a campaign was begun by John William Dawson
(1820-1899), palaeontologist, principal of McGill College, and civic leader of
Montreal.39 In England Dawson enlisted the support of the respected microscopist, physiologist, and subsequent organizer of the Challenger expedition
William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885). Carpenter informed the Royal Society
of Dawson's "revolutionary" Eozoo'n,a distant relative, he thought, of modern
foraminifera.4" Soon after Dawson's description of it in the Journal of the Geological
Society (1865)41 the scientific forces began to align themselves: for Eozoon
canadense, the Precambrian protozoan; and for eozo6n, the mineralogical
phenomenon.
At first the heavy artillery seemed to be on Dawson's side. Max Schultze's
examination of an Eozoon specimen left him with "no serious doubt" as to
its foraminiferal nature;42 in the fourth edition of the Origin (1866) Darwin
added his impression that "it is impossible to feel any doubt regarding its
organic nature;"43 and Huxley commented, early in 1868, that Eozoon was
Magazine, 1868, 18:39-408. I have utilized
37T. H. Huxley, "On a Piece of Chalk," AMacmillan's
the version in Huxley's Discourses Biological and Geological (New York: Appleton, 1896), pp. 1-36
(pp. 17-18).
38William E. Logan, "On the Laurentian Limestones," Canadian Naturalist antd Geologist, 1859,
4:300.
39Dawson's interesting career has been chronicled in Charles F. O'Brien's "Sir William Dawson:
A Life in Science and Religion," Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, June 1971, 84.
The Eozo6itcontroversy is covered more thoroughly by O'Brien in "Eozoon Canadense, 'The Dawn
Animal of Canada,'" Isis, 1970, 61:206-223. See also M. E. Mitchell, "On Eozoon Canademse"and
C. F. O'Brien, "Comments," Isis, 1971, 62:381-383.
40W. B. Carpenter, "On the Structure and Affinities of Eozoon Canadense," Proceedings of the
Royal Societyof London, 1863-1864, 13:545-549.
41J. W. Dawson, "On the Structure of Certain Oiganic Remains in the Laurentian Limestones
of Canada," QuarterlyJournal of the Geological Societyof Loadon, 1865, 21:51-59.
42 George P. Merrill, The First One Hundred Yearsof AmericantGeology(New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1924), p. 572.
43 The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: A Variorum Text, ed. Morse Peckham (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), p. 515.
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514
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
"fairly proved to be an encrusting Foraminifer." 44 The leading opponents
of Eozodnwere William King and Thomas H. Rowney, mineralogists at Queen's
College, Galway, Ireland.45 The controversy was truly international. For two
decades the scene of action shifted among England, Ireland, Germany, Canada,
and the United States. Most of the activity centered on a heated, not always
becoming exchange of articles between Dawson and Carpenter on the one
side and King and Rowney on the other. The exchange subsided after 1874,46
but resolution of the issue (in favor of the mineralogists) had to wait until
the twentieth century.47
In the beginning the Eozoon controversy was a purely geological one. It
might have subsided sooner had it not been for the new interest in the habitat
of the foraminifera and the discovery of Bathybius. In some minds there was
a reinforcement of belief in each of the organisms by the other two. All three
organisms seemed to be of protozoanal simplicity, to be distributed over wide
geographic areas, and to be associated with calcareous bodies. If the foraminifera
were bottom dwellers, then they might well be related to Bathybius; and if
the Eozoon fossil configuration had been originally formed on the floor of
the primitive oceans and later elevated to its Canadian location,48 then it was
easy to imagine Eozoon as the Precambrian ancestor of modern foraminifera
and of Bathybius.
By the mid-1860s, then, several lines of biological and geological research
seemed to be approaching a common ground. In cytology, Schultze's work
had affirmed that an amorphous protoplasm was the essential component of
the cell. Haeckel's study of the protozoa had yielded a number of species
that seemed to contain little more than this same protoplasm. Further, Haeckel
advanced the notion-by a logic he felt certain would be empirically con"Hunterian Lectures," p. 129.
45Their opposition was first expressed in a letter to the editor, Reader, 1865, 5:660. King and
Rowney included an "annotated history" of the controversy in their book An Old Chapter of
the GeologicalRecord. . . (London: John Van Voorst, 1881). Their chronology (1858-1880) mentions
over 40 participants, representing Canada, the United States, Britain, Germany, Spain, France,
and Russia.
46See W. B. Carpenter, "Final Note on Eozoon Canadense,"Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 1874, 4th Ser.,
14:371-372, in which the pointlessness of continued debate is emphasized.
47O'Brien, "Eozoaincanadense,'The Dawn Animal of Canada,' " p. 223. For recent pronouncements
on Eozoon, see also Percy E. Raymond, "Pre-Cambrian Life," Bulletin, Geological Society of America,
1935, 46:375-392 (pp. 377-378); Thomas H. Clark and Colin W. Stearn, Geological Evolution
of North America (2nd ed., New York: Ronald Press, 1968), pp. 32, 402, 408.
48 The idea of massive shifts in the relative positions of the ocean floor and the continents
was a popular one at this time. It was invoked by some, including Huxley ("On a Piece of Chalk")
and C. Wyville Thomson (The Depths of the Sea (London: Macmillan, 1872), Ch. 10) to explain
the similarity of modern ocean sediments to the ancient chalk formations. This idea, known
as the "continuity of the chalk," was a favorite one of Thomson's, chief scientist of the Challenger
expedition. His first pronouncement on the subject was a lecture in April 1869. A recent discussion
of the concept appears in Susan Schlee, The Edge of an Unfamiliar World (New York: Dutton,
1973), pp. 96-98, 142-143.
44Huxley,
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515
BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
firmed-that this protoplasm, the evolutionary basis of all subsequent life,
had been generated from nonliving matter. Concurrently, the early marine
geologists were pondering the origin of certain minute calcareous constituents
of the newly won ocean sediments, while palaeontologists were seeking a cause
for equally minute and strikingly similar structures of the Precambrian era.
The completion of this rather complex web awaited the discovery of an organism
composed entirely of undifferentiated protoplasm, capable of acquiring a calcium
shell, and living in an environment where conditions were sufficiently homogeneous through space and geological time to minimize the tendency for evolution
or extinction.
In retrospect it would seem that the completion of this web with an organism
such as Bathybius might have been effected by any microscopist working in
the tradition of mechanistic biology. Haeckel and his colleagues were probably
the most likely candidates. Haeckel's overly eager investigations of the Monera
had already led him into classifications later proven erroneous.49 Carpenter
would have been a second possible discoverer because of his interests in Eozoon,
his study of foraminifera, and his connections with ocean dredging. The ill-fated
discovery came to Huxley, however, because of the supremacy of the British
navy in deep-sea sounding during the third quarter of the nineteenth century,
and because of Huxley's access to the Admiralty through his position at the
School of Mines and his former naval commission as assistant surgeon (18461854).
THE BIRTH OF BATHYBIUS
... there are periods in the historyof every
science when a false hypothesis is not only
better than none at all, but is a necessary
forerunner of, and preparationfor, the true
one.
-T.
H. Huxley50
In the spring of 1868 Huxley returned to the study of his sediment specimens.
Why he did so is far from certain, but several conjectures are possible. He
had recently obtained a much stronger microscope (1,200 diameters) manufactured by Andrew Ross,5' which he said "renders obvious many details hardly
49See below, n. 114.
50"The Cell-theory," pp. 248-249.
5'The study of microorganisms was severely hampered by the state of microscope technology
until the mid-nineteenth century, when the achromatic compound microscope had become clearly
superior to the single lens. Andrew Ross, one of the leading British microscope producers, constructed
his instruments on the highly successful design of Joseph Lister, from about 1831 until his death
in 1859. His son, Thomas Ross, then took over the business and during the 1860s began producing
binocular microscopes. It is possible that Huxley's new microscope was one of these binocular
models, but since he makes no mention of such an improvement, I assume that he continued
to use the elder Ross' monocular type. The latter is depicted in Plt. I of John Quekett's A Practical
Treatise on the Use of the Microscope(2nd ed., London: H. Baillier, 1852). See also Hughes, History
of Cytology,p. 11; S. Bradbury, "The Quality of the Image Produced by the Compound Microscope:
(Cambridge: Heffer,
1700-1840," in S. Bradbury and G. L'E. Turner, Historical Aspectsof MVicroscopy
1967), p. 170: S. Bradbury, The Evolution of the Microscope(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1967), pp.
194, 211.
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516
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
decipherable with the 1/6th inch objective which I used in 1857."52 Perhaps
the sediments were merely a convenient subject on which to test the powers
of the new instrument. It seems more likely, however, that he was seeking
answers to some old problems. Were there any soft parts remaining in the
Globigerinashells which would attest to their having been alive when the sounding
device snatched them up? This could confirm Huxley's belief in their benthic
existence. Were the Coccoliths actually just miniature plates which had come
loose from the surface of Coccospheres, as Wallich thought, or did they normally
exist independently of the Coccospheres, as Huxley had first suggested? 53
Were there Coccospheres in his samples which he had missed during his 1857
examination? If so, did they actually contain soft parts ("sarcode") as Wallich
insisted? Were the sediments accumulating now on the ocean floor identical
to those formed in the Cretaceous period? And what of Eozoon? Did any of
the foraminifera in his sediments resemble the alleged Precambrian fossil?
Any or all of these questions could have influenced Huxley's decision to
reexamine the sediments, but his subsequent remarks indicate that some
questions were more important than others.
Upon concluding his reexamination, Huxley reported his findings, verbally
to the British Association in August 1868,"4 and in writing in the Quarterly
Journal of Microscopical Science the following October.55 The reexamination
revealed, in addition to the numerous familiar sediment constituents, some
new members: (1) two distinct types of Coccoliths which Huxley named
"Discoliths" and "Cyatholiths;" (2) the Coccospheres described by Wallich; and
(3) protoplasm-like "granule-heaps" and "transparent gelatinous matter," which
appeared to contain no nucleus and "no trace of a membranous envelope."56
He described this substance further as a
... deep-sea "Urschleim," which must, I think, be regarded as a new form of
those simple animated beings which have recently been so well described by Haeckel
in his "Monographie der Moneren." I proposed to confer upon this new "Moner"
the generic name of Bathybius,and to call it after the eminent Professor of Zoology
in the University of Jena, B. Haeckelii.57 [See Fig. 1.]
It is important to note that at this time Huxley was quite guarded in his
statements about Bathybius. To affirm that it was living protoplasm was as
far as he would go, a reluctance which was to lessen his embarrassment later
52Huxley, "On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths," p. 205.
53 Huxley referred to the Coccoliths as "curious rounded bodies" in the Hunterian Lectures
of 1868, indicating at least that he still regarded the question of their nature an open one ("Huriterian
Lectures," p. 129).
54Huxley, "On Some Organisms which Live at the Bottom of the North Atlantic." Huxley
presented his "On a Piece of Chalk" at this same meetinig.
55Huxley, "On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths." This paper appeared just prior to
his lecture "On the Physical Basis of Life."
56Huxley, "On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths," p. 206.
57Ibid., p. 210. During the latter half of the nineteenth century descriptions of the cytoplasm
of various animals frequently mentioned a "reticular or net-like structure," or "granules within
an amorphous matrix." See Hughes, History of Cytology,pp. 112-120.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
517
Figure 1. Bathybius haeckelii. Ernst Haeckel's drawing (B3iologische Studien, 1870) as it
appeared in C. Wyville Thomson, The Depths of the Sea (New York: Macmillan,
1873), p. 412.
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518
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
on. Referring to Bathybius,the Coccoliths, Coccospheres, and other ingredients
of the ooze, he insisted: "I have hitherto said nothing about their meaning,
as in an inquiry so difficult and fraught with interest as this, it seems to me
to be in the highest degree important to keep the questions of fact and the
questions of interpretation well apart."58
Huxley did propose his theory that the Coccoliths and Coccospheres were
structural components of Bathybius, analogous to the spicules of sponges. In
fact, he seemed more concerned with the various calcareous bodies which
had occupied Wallich than with the "new 'Moner."' He agreed that there
was probably a connection between the Coccoliths and Coccospheres themselves;
but instead of the former being merely cast-off sections of the latter, Huxley
thought it equally likely that the Coccoliths existed independently and at some
stage "coalesced" to form Coccospheres. In the ten-page report of the sediments
only about two pages involved Bathybius itself; the remainder was concerned
with the nature of and opinions on Coccoliths and Coccospheres. This emphasis
is an indication that Huxley's main interest in reexamining the sediments had
been to advance the dialogue with Wallich. Issues which were to become
associated with Bathybiuslater (the nature of Eozo6n, the habitat of Globigerina)
were not mentioned.
Huxley's first action after publishing his discovery was to write to Haeckel.
Referring to his paper in the QuarterlyJournal, he advised Haeckel:
It is about a new 'Moner' which lives at the bottom of the atlantic to all appearance,
and gives rise to some wonderful calcified bodies....
I have christened it BathybiusHaeckeliiand I hope that you will not be ashamed
of your godchild. I will send you some of the mud itself with the paper. ..59
In his congratulatory reply, Haeckel wasted no time in pointing out the
connection of Bathybiuswith Naturphilosophie:
I am, of course, most especially delighted by "Bathybius Haeckelii" and am very
proud to be the godfather at its christening!
The Coccospheres are extremely remarkable; their relationship to the Discoliths
and Cyatholiths is indeed still very puzzling. It will probably be some time before
we are able to clear up all these lowest Protista of the ocean floor, and to establish
something definite about the connections of all the uncertain protistic and protoplasmic primitive organisms. But the "Urschleim" of Oken is clearly coming more
and more back into favor, and my theory of plastids [cells with or without nuclei]
can truly rejoice about that! "Vive Monera"!60
58Huxley, "On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths," p. 210. In the discussion following
the paper, Huxley denied that his work gave any confirmation of the possibility of spontaneous
generation. See "The British Association for the Advancement of Science," Journl of Science,
1868, 5:501-545 (pp. 529-530).
59Uschmann and Jahn, "Briefwechsel . . . Huxley . . . Haeckel," p. 18.
60 Ibid.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
519
Despite Haeckel's enthusiasm, which was eventually to make him the most
prolific writer on Bathybius, Huxley's British colleagues were the first to take
up the subject publicly. In December 1868 Carpenter reported to the Royal
Society on the dredging operations which he and Wyville Thomson had
undertaken in H.M.S. Lightning the previous summer. Their brief excursion
into the seas north of Scotland had yielded Coccoliths, Coccospheres, and,
This mud
in the last dredging at 650 fathoms, a "particularly viscid mud.'
was examined by Huxley (though apparently not by Carpenter) and found
to contain Bathybius,thus confirming his earlier conclusions.
Carpenter's report raised the primary question which was to reappear in
nearly all later publications on Bathybius,the problem of its food source:
In what manner the materials for its protoplasm . . . are obtained, is a most
perplexing problem. All the evidence we at present possess in regard to the
alimentation of the Rhizopods, leads to the belief that, in common with higher
Animals, they depend on Organic Compounds previously elaborated by Vegetative
agency under the influence of the light and heat of the Sun. But every form
of Vegetable life that is visible to the naked eye seems entirely wanting at great
depths in the ocean. . .. It may be that the Bathybius . . has so far the attributes
of a Vegetable, that it is able to elaborate Organic Compounds out of the materials
supplied by the medium in which it lives, and thus to provide sustenance for
the Animals imbedded in its midst.62
Despite the problems of its nourishment and its taxonomic status as animal
or plant, Carpenter did not doubt Bathybius'existence. And he was enthusiastic
in pointing out its probable geological age and relationship to Dawson's Eozoon:
The discovery of this indefinite plasmodium, covering a wide area of the existing
Sea-bottom, should afford a remarkable confirmation, to such (at least) as still
think confirmation necessary, of the doctrine of the Organic origin of the Serpentine-Limestone of the Laurentian Formation. For if Bathybius, like the testaceous
Rhizopods, should form for itself a shelly envelope, that envelope would closely
resemble Eozoon. Further, as Prof. Huxley has proved the existence of Bathybius
through a great range not merely of depth but of temperature,I cannot but think
it probable that it has existed continuously in the deep seas of all Geological Epochs.63
Carpenter may have been willing to accept Bathybiusin spite of the theoretical
difficulties it brought with it, but Wallich was far more skeptical. In a January
61W B. Carpenter, "Preliminary Report of Dredging Operations in the Seas to the North of
the British Islands, carried on in Her Majesty's Steam-vessel 'Lightning,'" Proc. Roy. Soc. Lon.,
1868, 17:168-200. See also Carpenter's "On the Rhizopodal Fauna of the Deep Sea," Proc. Roy.
Soc. Lon., 1869-1870, 18:59-62.
62 Carpenter, "Preliminary Report," pp. 190-191. Henry Alleyne Nicholson, Professor of Natural
History at St. Andrews, picked up this theme in the first edition of his A Manual of Zoology
(Edinburgh/London: William Blackwood, 1870). He cited Bathybis as a possible exception to
the rule that plants have the power to convert inorganic compounds into organic mnatterwhile
animals lack this ability. But he added, "The water of the ocean, however, at these enormous
depths, is richly charged with organic mnatterin solution, and this conjecture is thereby rendered
doubtful" (p. 10).
63Carpenter, "Preliminary Report," p. 191 n.
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520
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
1869 article Wallich discussed his researches on Coccoliths and Coccospheres
at length. While Huxley had conjectured that these small calcareous bodies
might constitute the skeletal structure of Bathybius,Wallich was convinced they
were parts of independent organisms, having no direct relationship to Bathybius.
As evidence of this independence he stated that in many bottom samples he
had observed Coccospheres and Coccoliths "in profusion" where there was
"scarcely a trace of muddy or slimy substance"-that is, Bathybius.f Wallich
concluded by expressing "with great deference" his grave doubts about Huxley's
supposed organism. He was inclined to regard it instead as a slime of decomposing plant and animal matter: "analogy, and the bulk of direct evidence, is
in favour of the supposition that this widely distributed protoplastic matter
is the product, rather than the source, of the vital forces which are already
in operation at the sea bed."65
The following month Huxley had occasion to defend his discovery before
a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. The author of a paper on some
new Gulf Stream data had claimed that no living matter was to be found
on the bottom in the region he had sounded. After the paper's reading, Huxley
countered that he had examined the soundings himself and had submitted
them to Professor Edward Frankland for organic analysis. Frankland had found
them to contain more than 1' per cent organic matter, identifiable in two
forms: the shells of foraminifera and the "confused network" of Bathybius.
These facts Huxley regarded as "now definitely acquired by science." 66
Moreover, recent soundings in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans had
confirmed the existence of Bathybius there at depths up to 2,800 fathoms,
proving its distribution to be truly global. But, he admitted, how animals could
live at such depths, "how they acquired their store of food, was one of the
most curious questions of organic chemistry; one which we could not solve
at present."67
In the summer of 1869 Carpenter and Thomson carried out a second dredging
cruise. Fresh Bathybius was obtained from the Bay of Biscay and described
as being "capable of a certain amount of movement." 68 The notion of movement
64G. C. Wallich, "On the Vital Functions of the Deep-sea Protozoa," MonthlyMicroscopicalJournal,
1869, 1:32-41 (p. 36).
65 Ibid., p. 39. Wallich added that Eozo6nhad been used, he felt, prematurely to support Bathybius;
too little was yet known about the former to be sure that it was not just as highly differentiated
as ordinary foraminifera and therefore too complex to be allied to Bathybius. Ten years later
Wallich, bitter over the lack of recognition of his deep-sea discoveries, sought to have Thomson
and Carpenter expelled from the Royal Society for their plagiarism and misrepresentation of
his ideas. When it was suggested that Huxley (then Royal Society secretary) be a party to the
adjudication of the complaint, Wallich insisted that he could not accept any decision of Huxley's,
because he and Huxley had earlier taken opposite sides on Bathybius. This dispute appears in
a series of letters between Wallich and Joseph Hooker, 1877-1878 (Royal Society Miscellaneous
Correspondence, Vol. XI, MSS 126-149). Wallich spelled out his position on Bathybius at length
in "On the True Nature of the So-called 'Bathybius' and its Alleged Function in the Nutrition
of the Protozoa," Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 1875, 4th Ser., 16:322-339.
66Huxley, [untitled discussion,] Proceedingsof the Royal GeographicalSociety, 1869, 13:110.
67 Ibid.
68Thomson, The Depths of the Sea, p. 411. I have quoted throughout from the 2nd ed. (1874)
which is, so far as I know, identical to the 1st (1873).
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
521
was repeatedly emphasized by Haeckel as indubitable proof of its vitality when
Bathybius later came under attack.69 No explanation has been given for this
alleged movement, but one might suspect it to be a combination of the observers'
imagination and the motion of the ship causing the substance to shift about
sluggishly. Since all of the specimens taken ashore were preserved in alcohol
(including all that Huxley and Haeckel ever observed), no movement was noted
in the laboratory, nor was any expected.
On the Continent the first study of Bathybius to be reported was that of
the Munich geologist Professor C. W. Gumbel. Huxley sent a sample of Bathybius
to Giimbel and in return received a letter describing the latter's experiments.
Giimbel had subjected the ooze to various acids and stains, determining to
his satisfaction that he was dealing with organic matter. Within the calcareous
bodies of the Coccoliths he discovered what he thought to be a type of cellulose;
this led him to favor the theory that the Coccoliths, if not Bathybius itself,
were plants rather than animals.
By 1870 Haeckel had completed the first of several analyses (as conjectural
as they were chemical) of Bathybius. "Bathybius und das freie Protoplasm der
Meerestiefen," a chapter in his "Beitrage zur Plastidentheorie," appeared in
the Jenaische Zeitschriftfor that year. Even in the opening paragraphs Haeckel
showed little of the cautious regard for speculation which Huxley had demonstrated. The great quantity and vast extent of Bathybius over the ocean floor
was, for Haeckel, a fact of far-reaching importance in all of biology:
One cannot regard closely this highly noteworthy fact without the deepest
astonishment and one is involuntarily led to recall the protoplasm (Urschleim) of
Oken. This universal protoplasm of the older Naturphilosophie, which originated
in the sea and was to be the foundation of all life, the productive material of
all organisms, this famous and notorious protoplasm whose broad meaning was
already established implicitly through Max Schultze's protoplasm theory-has
become a complete reality through Huxley's discovery of Bathybius.71
Haeckel went on to describe the history of Huxley's discovery and to extend
his experimental results by the use of carmine stain.72 The action of the stain,
plus the earlier observation by Carpenter and Thomson of what Haeckel called
69Ernst Haeckel, "Bathybius und die Monerein," Kosmos, 1877, 1:293-305 (pp. 298, 301, 303).
70C. W. Giimbel, "Vorkiufige Mittheilungen uberTiefseeschlamm," NeuesJahrbuchfiirMineralogie,
1870, 6. heft, pp. 753-767; and "The Deep-Sea Soundings and Geology," Nature, 1870, 1:657-658.
Giimbel was also a supporter of Eozooincaniadenseand of the related species Eozo6n bavaricum,
which he had discovered himself. See his "On the Laurenitian Rocks of Bavaria," Can. Natur.,
1866, N.S. 3:81-101.
7'Ernst Haeckel, "Beitrage zur Plastidentheorie," Jenia. Z. Med. Naturwiss., 1870, 5:499-519 (p.
500).
72 The carmine stain, derived from the cochineal insect, Coccus cacti, of Mexico, was used in
microscopic work as early as 1770. It was probably the most highly valued stain among the early
histologists of the nineteenth century. See H. J. Coinn, The History of Staining (Geneva, N.Y.:
Biotechnical Publications, 1933), pp. 27-29.
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PHILIP F. REHBOCK
"characteristic protoplasmic movements"73 fully convinced Haeckel that Bathybius was a true organism. It seems likely, however, that Haeckel would have
been committed to this view regardless of any experimental confirmation,
because of the way Bathybiusfit into his monistic philosophy.
Haeckel described his specimens in much greater detail than Huxley had.
In particular he noted that the "granule-heaps" (collections of minute particles)
were the predominant form in his samples and that the "gelatinous matrix"
emphasized in the British accounts was relatively rare. As the granule heaps
gave the proper response to stains while the matrix did not, Haeckel decided
that the former were the true Bathybius and the latter merely a result of
decomposition: "a plasma-product which arises from the death of Bathybius."74
Having dispensed with the drudgery of description, Haeckel then turned
to the thrilling implications of the new organism: "The fact that huge masses
of naked, living protoplasm cover the greater ocean depths in completely
preponderant quantities and under entirely peculiar circumstances, stimulates
such numerous reflections that one could write a book about them."75 The
kernel of Haeckel's contribution to the Bathybiusstory was his certain conviction
that it had originated on the ocean floor by spontaneous generation. The
only other simple organism believed to inhabit that region was Globigerina,
and Haeckel was convinced that "no kind of genetic connection" between the
two could be demonstrated.76 Furthermore, the nourishment and reproduction
of Bathybiuswould be very difficult to explain if one insisted that it, like other
animals, subsist on organic nutrients. There was only one logical alternative
for Haeckel: "Is protoplasm perhaps originating continually through spontaneous generation? Here we stand before a series of dark questions, the answers
to which can only be hoped for from subsequent researches."77
Later in the same year Haeckel amplified his position on spontaneous
generation. The monistic explanation of the physical world, toward which science
had been striving in the nineteenth century, entailed the hypothesis of spontaneous generation as the only logical link between the organic and inorganic
realms.78 And among all the Monera Bathybiuswas by far the most significant
indication of the correctness of that hypothesis. Bathybius,because of its simplicity
and its vast distribution, could be traced to no other source:
It must not be forgotten that, by admitting the living existence of the Monera
and especially Bathybius, we find ourselves confronted by the following alternatives:
73Haeckel, "Beitraige zur Plastidentheorie," p. 517.
74Ibid., p. 508.
75Ibid., p. 517.
76Ibid., p. 518.
77Ibid., p. 519.
78This had been a point of emphasis in the GenerelleMorphologieand was repeated here. Haeckel,
"Nachtrage zur Monographie der Moneren," Jena. Z. Naturwiss., Med. 1870-1871, 6:22-44 (p.
37). (A partial translation appears in E. R. L[ankester], "Ernst Haeckel on the Mechanical Theory
of Life and Spontaneous Generation," Nature, 1871, 3:354-356.) Haeckel claimed here that
spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis, "is, in fact, a necessary and integral part of the universal
evolution theory. It is the natural bridge which places in continuity Kant's and Laplace's theory
of the mechanical origin of the universe and the earth, with Lamarck's and Darwin's theory
of the mechanical origin of animal and vegetal forms" (p. 355).
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
523
Either the Monera were once and for all, at the beginning of organic life on
the earth, produced by Archigenesis [spontaneous generation] -in which case they
must have reproduced in a direct line unchanged for many millions of years;
or else, in the course of the earth's history, they have been produced by recurring
acts of Archigenesis, and in this case there is no reason why this process should
not occur at the present time.79
Haeckel preferred the latter alternative because it seemed to present fewer
theoretical difficulties.80 But in either case the Monera were a great step forward
in the acceptance of the theory of spontaneous generation and a critical link
in the understanding of the origin of life.8'
Huxley would not commit himself to Haeckel's theory of Bathybius'inorganic
origins, although he was not opposed to abiogenesis in principle. In the lecture
"Biogenesis and Abiogenesis" of 1870, he argued that the evidence pointed
to biogenesis for "all known forms of life."82 Though he felt certain that
abiogenesis had not yet been accomplished in man's presence, he was much
more guarded about what might have occurred in the geologic past:
. . .if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time
to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and
chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man can recall his
infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm
from not living matter. I should expect to see it appear under forms of great
simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of determining the formation
of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates and
tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the aid of light. That
is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once
more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act
of philosophical faith.83
The lecture on abiogenesis would have been an obvious place to discuss
the significance of Bathybius had Huxley felt as confident in the matter as
Haeckel did. But Bathybius was not mentioned there. Nor was it mentioned
in Huxley's presidential address to the Geological Society of the same year,
79Haeckel, "Nachtrage zur Monographie der Moneren," pp. 41-42.
80This is one of several conceptions Haeckel apparently borrowed from Lamarck. See Lester
F. Ward, Haeckel'sGenesis of iMan(Philadelphia: Edward Stern, 1879), p. 17.
81 Haeckel, "Nachtrage zur Monographie der Moneren," p. 42. Ward emphasized the difference
between the generation of life in a fluid containing organic matter ("plasmagonia") and generation
in a medium consisting only of inorganic elements ("autogonia"). He criticized Haeckel for insisting
that the Monera came about through autogonia (without the intervening stage of organic matter),
which he thought "would doubtless be too great a saltus for Nature to take." Ward, Haeckel's
Genesis, pp. 46-47.
82Huxley, DiscoursesBiological and Geological, p. 254.
83Ibid., p. 255.
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524
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
even though at that time he felt certain enough of Eozoon to proclaim himself
on Dawson's side.84
Only Dawson and Carpenter would support a direct relationship between
Bathybiusand Eozoon. Hoping to further his case for Eozoon, Dawson published
a history of its discovery, entitled The Dawn of Life, in 1875. In the description
of the fossil specimens, Dawson pointed out their relationship to Bathybius:
The lowest layer of serpentine represents the first gelatinous coat of animal
matter which grew upon the bottom, and which, if we could have seen it before
any shell was formed upon its surface, must have resembled, in its appearance,
at least, the shapeless coat of living slime found in some portions of the bed of
the sea, which has received from Huxley the name Bathybius...85
Dawson's interest in Eozoonand Bathybiuswas more than just geological. Unlike
the other participants in these discussions, Dawson was until his death a forceful
opponent of Darwinism. When others saw Eozoon as filling an important gap
in Darwin's imperfect geological record,86 Dawson insisted that the great hiatus
in time and morphological complexity between Eozoon and the later Cambrian
forms of life eliminated any possibility of the latter being evolutionary descendents of the former.87 Eozoonthus became as important to Dawson's creationism
as Bathybiuswas to Haeckel's monism.88
By associating Bathybiuswith the mechanistic interpretation of life, Haeckel
forced the proponents of vitalism into the fray. Lionel Beale devoted several
pages to the subject in the second edition of Protoplasm (1870). Not having
investigated Bathybiuspersonally, Beale admitted he was dependent on others'
comments, mainly Wallich's. The thought of global masses of abyssal protoplasm
he regarded as "fanciful and improbable"; Bathybius was to be relegated to
"a complex mass of slime with many foreign bodies and the debris of living
84Huxley, "Anniversary Address of the President," Q. J. Geol. Soc., 1870, 26:xxix-lxiv. He remarked
that "if the Eozoon be, as Principal Dawson and Dr. Carpenter have shown so much reason
for believing, the remains of a living being, the discovery of its true nature carried life back
to a period which, as Sir William Logan has observed, is as remote from that during which
the Cambrian rocks were deposited, as the Cambrian epoch itself is from the tertiaries. In other
words, the ascertained duration of life upon the globe was nearly doubled at a stroke" (p. xliv).
But Huxley could not accept a genetic relationship between Eozooin and Bathybius, because while
the former might be foraminiferal, the latter he felt definitely was not. He did admit, however,
that the existence of Bathybiwslent credence to the organic nature of Eozo6n, because both seemed
to have been "susceptible of apparently indefinite growth." And he thought it "possible that
such organisms might have gone on living from the earliest geological times." See "Discussion"
followiing King and Rowney, "On the So-called 'Eozoonal Rock,'" Q. J. Geol. Soc., 1869, 25:115-118
(p. 118).
85J. W. Dawson, The Dawn of Life (Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1875), pp. 65-66.
86Huxley, "Anniversary Address," p. xliv.
87 Dawson, The Dawn of Life, p. 227.
88Dawson's attitude toward Haeckel's interpretation of Bathybius is clear from the following:
"Haeckel, the prophet of this new philosophy, waves his magic wand, and simple masses of sarcode
spring from inorganic matter, and form diffused sheets of sea-slime, from which are in time
separated distinct Amoeboid and Foraminiferal forms. Experience, however, gives us no facts
whereon to build this supposition, and it remains neither more nor less scientific or certain than
that old fancy of the Egyptians, which derived animals from the fertile mud of the Nile." (Ibid.,
p. 218.)
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
525
organisms which have passed away."89 Ironically, Beale's armchair approach
had brought him closer to the truth than all the most careful observations
of those he had read.
The British were not the only ones to acquire their own Bathybius. Haeckel's
published an article on his encounter
colleague Oscar Schmidt (1823-1886)
with it in 1870. An expedition to the Adriatic gave him his material:
The first freshly examined sample of the bottom from 170 fathoms convinced
me that I had Bathybius-mud before me. Its yellowish-grey colour and its exceedingly
characteristic greasy nature were so well known to the officers that I was unanimously
assured by them that this "primitive mud" predominates from the upper parts
of the Adriatic Sea....90
The final deep-sea specimen in the Bathybius tradition was discovered in
of Heidelberg.
August 1872 by the polar explorer Emil Bessels (1847-1888),
As the American North Pole Expedition aboard Polaris passed through Greenland's Smith Sound, Bessels dredged up a new genus at 90 fathoms. Though
similar in consistency to Bathybius, the new "Moner" was simpler in that it
lacked Coccoliths. For this reason Bessels thought it an older form than Huxley's
genus, and assigned the generic name Protobathybius; the specific name, robesonii,
honored George M. Robeson, then U.S. Secretary of the Navy and an important
backer of the Polaris expedition.9'
Though less well known than Bathybius,
Protobathybius (see Fig. 2) also had a curious history. It was hailed as an important
conifirmation of the existence of abyssal Monera by supporters of Bathybius,
and when the latter was discredited, the former retained its reputation as
a genuine organism. Rather than being disproved, Protobathybius apparently
generally became
was just forgotten when beliefs in deep-sea protoplasm
unpopular.
With the announcement
of Protobathybius in 1873, Bathybius reached the peak
of H.M.S.
of its credibility. It is no surprise, therefore, that the oceanographers
distribution
more
during
to
ascertain
exactly
its
geographic
Challenger expected
their four-year cruise of the world's oceans (1872-1876).
What they found,
however, was something quite different.
89Beale, Protoplasm,pp. 22-25 (see n. 12 above).
90Oscar Schmidt, "On Coccoliths and Rhabdoliths," Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 1872, 4th Ser.,
10:359-370 (p. 361). This is a translation by W. S. Dallas, from the Sitzungsberichteder Kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaft,Wien, 1870, 62:669-682.
9'Though discovered in 1872, Protobathybiusrobesonii was not reported by Bessels until a year
later, when the crew of the Polaris, rescued by British fishing vessels, had returned to the United
States. "Report to the President of the United States of the Action of the Navy Department
in the matter of the Disaster to the United States Exploring Expedition toward the North Pole,
accompanied by a report of the Examination of the Rescued Party, etc.," Report of the Secretary
of the Navy (Washington: G.P.O., 1873), pp. 283-628 (p. 546). See also E. Bessels, "Haeckelina
gigantea: ein Protist aus der Gruppe der Monothalamien," Jena. Z. Med. Naturwiss., 1875, 9:265-279
(p. 277 n.); E. Bessels, "Lettre sur l'expedition polaire Americaine, sous les ordres du Capt. Hall,"
Bulletin, SocietedeGeographiede Paris, 1875, 9:291-299; E. Bessels, Die AmerikanischeNordpolexpedition
(Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1879), pp. 320-322; A. S. Packard, Life Histories of Animals, Including
Man (New York: Henry Holt, 1876), pp. 3-4.
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PHILIP F. REHBOCK
526
I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Figure 2. Protobathybius robesonii. From A. S. Packard, Jr., Life Histories of
Animals, Including Man (New York: Henry Holt, 1876), p. 3.
DEATH ON THE HIGH SEAS
In the autumn of 1872, as the Challengerwas being readied for her oceanographic cruise, her scientific director, Wyville Thomson, published an account
of his earlier dredging expeditions with Carpenter. The Depths of the Sea set
forth the state of the pre-Challenger marine sciences and is thus a guidepost
for the history of oceanography. In a review of the research and speculations
on Bathybius haeckelii up to that time, Thomson revealed some ambivalence
about Bathybius' existence. He recognized that the many descriptions of it were
not all in agreement. Although he saw nothing illogical about a vast abyssal
Moner, he felt that much of what had been taken for Bathybius was probably
a diverse organic residue of some sort, "a formless condition connected either
with the growth and multiplication or with the decay-of
many different
in
of
his
still
seemed
to think that
But
Thomson
spite
skepticism,
things.""2
92Thomson, The Depths of the Sea, p. 415.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
527
a primitive creature of some kind lived in and contributed to the abyssal
environment: "as no living thing, however slowly it may live, is ever perfectly
at rest, but is continually acting and reacting with its surroundings, the bottom
of the sea becomes like the surface of the sea and of the land-a theatre
of change, performing its part in maintaining the 'balance of organic nature."'93
With respect to the Coccoliths, Thomson could be less equivocal:
. . .the balance of opinion is in favour of the view that the coccoliths are joints
of a minute unicellularalga living on the sea-surfaceand sinking down and mixing
with the sarcode of Bathybius,very probably taken into it with a purpose, for
the sake of the vegetable matter they may contain, and which may afford food
for the animal jelly.94
Though Thomson did not cite the source of this opinion, it was probably
related to the work of the retired army surgeon and marine biologist Henry
John Carter (1812(?)-1895). Carter had noticed a peculiar type of cell associated
with sponges and ascidians in his microscopical researches on seashore life.
In April 1870 he obtained some Atlantic deep-sea mud from Carpenter and
immediately noted that the Coccoliths therein were identical to the cells he
had previously examined. Noting their abundance in the alimentary canals
of certain large ascidians he had been observing, Carter decided they must
be plants. He then compared them to pulverized pieces of a branching calcareous
alga (Melobesia calcarea) and found enough similarity to convince himself that
the Coccoliths should be renamed Melobesiaunicellularis.5
But in 1872 it was Bathybius, not the Coccoliths, that predominated in the
minds of the Challenger scientists. Would the voyage yield new information
about its nature and geographical extent? During the first three years of the
voyage they looked for it eagerly each time the dredge was hauled on board.
Thomson's earlier experience with the original organism and his generally
skeptical attitude made it less likely that every viscous ooze brought up would
93Ibid., p. 411-412. Carpenter exhibited a similar skepticism in the 5th ed. of The Microscope
and Its Revelations (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1875), pp. 466, 795.
94Thomson, The Depths of the Sea, p. 414. See also Thomson, "Preliminary Notes on the Nature
of the Sea-bottom, Procured by the Soundings of H.M.S. 'Challenger' during her Cruise in the
'Southern Sea' in the Early Part of the Year 1874," Proc. Roy. Soc. Lon., 1874-75, 23:32-49 (p.
38).
95H.
J. Carter, "On Melobesia unicellularis, better known as the Coccolith," Ann. Mag. Nat.
Hist., 1871, 4th Ser., 7:184-189. Carter's work was not the last word on the subject, however.
Though it was generally agreed by the late 1870s that the Coccoliths were of algal origin, their
exact systematic position and ecological relations remained in question until the turn of the century.
By then algologists had determined that Carter had chosen the correct kingdom but the wrong
phylum for the Coccoliths. The branching Melobesia is a benthic red alga (Rhodophyta), whereas
the Coccolith plate structure is produced by the planktonic biflagellate Coccolithophoridae, a
major family of the golden-brown algae (Chrysophyta). See Gilbert W. Prescott, "History of
Phycology," in G. M. Smith, Manual of Phycology(Waltham, Mass.: Chronica Botanica, 1951), pp.
1-9; G. F. Papenfuss, "Classification of the Algae," in A Century of Progress in the Natural Sciences,
1853-1953 (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1955), pp. 115-224; E. Yale Dawson,
Marine Botany, an Introduction(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), Ch. 16. I am indebted
to Dr. Robert Fournier of Dalhousie University for correcting my interpretation of Carter's
contribution.
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528
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
be labeled Bathybius, as seems to have happened with the Germans Schmidt
and Bessels. And indeed, no fresh Bathybiuscould be found.
Finally, in the early months of 1875, as the Challenger was en route from
Hong Kong to Yokohama, new events brought about the demise of Bathybius.
The ship's chemist, John Young Buchanan (1844-1925), thinking that samples
of bottom water must contain some portion of the organism, tried to isolate
it by evaporating bottom water and heating the residue. No sign of carbonization
or burning was observed.96 Meanwhile, John Murray (1841-1914), who had
been responsible for data relating to the physics and geology of the ocean
basins, had been preserving numerous bottom samples in alcohol, in accordance
with Huxley's instructions.97 Some of these, he noted, "assumed a very mobile
or jelly-like aspect."98 Buchanan described it as a "substance like 'coagulated
mucus,' which answered in every particular, except the want of motion, to
the description of the organism."99
Because of the failure of the evaporation and burning test, Buchanan became
convinced that the substance must be inorganic. When he then analyzed the
material, he found it to be calcium sulfate ("sulfate of lime"). The chemical
had been precipitated out of the sea water present in the sediment by the
addition of the preserving alcohol. Further experiments, described by Murray,
showed that the essential ingredients were small amounts of sea water and
large amounts of alcohol. When the proportion of alcohol to sea water was
relatively small, the precipitate took on a crystalline form; this was presumably
what Haeckel saw as "granule-heaps." Larger amounts of alcohol caused the
precipitate to remain amorphous; this was Huxley's "structureless matrix."
Staining of the precipitate did indeed show the appearance which Haeckel
thought to be decisive proof of its organic nature.'00
The Challenger scientists were initially incredulous at this discovery, except
for Buchanan, who seemed to take delight generally in debunking the theories
of others.'0' Thomson wrote to Huxley on June 9, 1875, relating the new
developments. The following excerpts from Thomson's letter document this
crucial turning point in Bathybius'history and give a hint of the spirit in which
this research was carried on.
There is another matter on which / I have some little hesitation / in writing
at present because / I feel that our information / is imperfect, but yet I think
96J. Y. Buchanan, "Preliminary Report to Professor Wyville Thomson, F.R.S., Director of the
Civilian Scientific Staff, on Work (Chemical and Geological) done on board H.M.S. 'Challenger,'"
Proc. Roy. Soc. Lon., 1876, 24:593-626 (p. 605). See also J. Y. Buchanan, Accounts Rendered of
WorkDone and Things Seen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919).
97Huxley had been a member of the committee of the Royal Society which had drawn up
the instructions for Challenger's scientific staff. See Challenger Reports, Narrative, Vol. I, pt. 1,
p. li.
98John Murray, "Preliminary Report to Professor Wyville Thomson, F.R.S., Director of the
Civilian Scientific Staff, on Work Done on Board the 'Challenger,'" Proc. Roy. Soc. Lon., 1876,
24:471-543 (p. 530).
99Buchanan, "Preliminary Report," p. 605.
??Murray, "Preliminary Report," pp. 530-531.
101Hugh Robert Mill, "Obituary to Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, F.R.S.," Nature, 1925, 116:719-720.
See also George E. R. Deacon, "Early Scientific Studies of the Antarctic Ocean," Bulletin de l'Institut
Oceanographique,Monaco, No. special 2 (1968), pp. 269-279.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
529
/ as it is one which has been given / undue importance of late, and / bears
upon a question in which / you are officially mixed up / you should be told
exactly / how it stands. None of us / have ever been able to see / a trace of
Bathybius, although / it has been looked for throughout / with the utmost care
. . .Murray who / has worked at it most carefully, / and Suhm & Moseley who
are / well up to the use of the microscope / all deny that such a thing exists
/
. I have / gone over Haeckel's papers & all / the other notes we have
on / board about it and I think / so also, but I do not feel / absolutely certain
yet as to / the constitution of the flocculent / precipitate. It seems to me / possible
that a trace of organic / matter may combine with / the lime sulphate to give
it / that very peculiar form, and / as there will certainly be a / vigorous discussion
about it / I am inclined to check any / hasty publication. Murray / and Buchanan
are anxious / to bring it out at once for / they expect the question to / arise
at the British Association and / they would rather have the / first word. I told
them, or / rather I told Murray, that I / would not sanction a paper / being
sent home till I had / written to you, as you took / a fatherly interest in the
beast? / and got your answer.'02
Though Thomson had not given up all hope of finding Bathybius alive,
Huxley was ready to admit his mistake and call off the search, as evidenced
by his immediate publication of a portion of Thomson's letter in Nature. After
the letter he added:
Prof. Thomson speaks very guardedly, and does not consider the fate of Bathybius
to be as yet absolutely decided. But since I am mainly responsible for the mistake,
if it be one, of introducing this singular substance into the list of living things,
I think I shall err on the right side in attaching even greater weight than he
does to the view which he suggests.'03
Soon thereafter
Huxley wrote to Michael Foster:
I have just had a long letter from Wyville Thomson. The Challenger inclines
to think that Bathybimsis a mineral precipitate! in which case some enemy will
probably say that it is a product of my precipitation. So mind, I was the first
to make that 'goak.' Old Ehrenberg suggested something of the kind to me, but
I have not his letter here. I shall eat my leek handsomely if any eating has to
be done.'04
LINGERING BATHYBIAL MEMORIES
A thorough exposure of Bathybius was made by Murray and Buchanan in
their "Preliminary Reports" of the Challenger results, presented to the Royal
102 Huxley Papers (Imperial College), Vol. 27, MSS 315-317. I thank the Archivist, Imperial
College, for permission to quote from the Huxley Papers.
103Huxley, "Notes from the Challenger," Nature, 1875, 12:315-316. Later published in Q. J.
Micros. Sci., 1875, 15:392.
104 Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 480. Ehrenberg's attitude toward Bathybius was
expressed in his "Mikrogeologische Studien iuber das kleinste Leben der Meeres-Tiefgriinde aller
Zonen und dessen geologischen Einfluss," Abhandlungen der koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften
zu Berlin, 1872, pp. 131-397 (pp. 362, 376). One letter of the Huxley-Ehrenberg correspondence
on Bathybiussurvives in the Huxley Papers (Imperial College), Vol. 15, MS 172; Ehrenberg expressed
therein his doubts about Bathybiusand requested samples be sent to him soon.
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PHILIP F. REHBOCK
Society in 1876.105 British naturalists then fell silent on the issue until the
1879 meeting of the British Association. In the opening address-a speculative
discussion of theories of living matter-the president, George Allman, resurrected Bathybius as an example of protoplasm. He was not convinced that
the Challenger staff had overturned the findings of the venerable Huxley.'06
Had the latter's discovery not been confirmed by Bessels' Protobathybius?'07
Huxley was surprised that Allman would use the highly questionable Moner
as a basis-for his theorizing. In his artful reply to the address, Huxley expressed
his regret at the apparent error he had initiated:
The president, in the early part of his address, alluded to a certain thing-I
hardly know whether I ought to call it thing or not-of which he gave you the
name Bathybius, and he stated, with perfect justice, that I had brought that thing
into notice; at any rate, indeed, I christened it, and I am, in a certain sense,
its earliest friend. . . I thought my young friend Bathybius would turn out a
credit to me. But I am sorry to say, as time has gone on, he has not altogether
verified the promise of his youth. In the first place, as the president told you,
he could not be found when he was wanted; and in the second place, when he
was found, all sorts of things were said about him. Indeed, I regret to be obliged
to tell you that some persons of severe minds went so far as to say that he was
nothing but simply a gelatinous precipitate of slime, which had carried down organic
matter. If that is so, I am very sorry for it, for whoever else may have joined
in this error, I am undoubtedly primarily responsible for it. But I do not know
at this time of my knowledge how the matter stands...
Therefore my own
judgment is in an absolute state of suspension about it.108
Despite his alleged uncertainty about the final status of Bathybius, Huxley
preferred (or, for lack of dredging opportunities, was forced) to let the matter
rest. There is no record of his having researched it further. He did not include
it among the Monera in his Manual of the Anatomy of the InvertebratedAnimals
(1877).109
105
Buchanan, "Preliminary Report," pp. 604-605; Murray, "Preliminary Report," pp. 529-531.
See also Lord George Campbell, Log-Lettersfrom "the Challenger"(London: Macmillan, 1876), pp.
446-448. The Challenger expedition also settled the issue of the habitat of Globigerina. Unlike
many other foraminifera which are bottom dwellers, Globigeriria lives in the upper layers, an
important member of the zooplankton. Huxley relented to this view in his lecture "On Some
Results of the Expedition to H.M.S. Challenger"(1875). See Huxley, DiscoursesBiological and Geological,
pp. 82-92.
106G.J. Allman, "Presidential Address to the British Association," Rep. B.A.A.S., 1879, pt. 1,
pp. 1-30 (pp. 3-4). Interestingly, Allman was Thomson's immediate predecessor as Professor
of Natural History at Edinburgh.
107 Ibid., pp. 3-4. Bessels did not mention whether or not he preserved his Protobathybius
specimens
in alcohol. Apparently he observed the substance right after removing it from the dredge. The
Polaris did carry alcohol for preservation purposes: Bessels testified to the Navy Department
that the ship's commanding officer had become intoxicated several times from drinking it (Report
of the Secretaryof the Navy, p. 541).
'08"The British Association at Sheffield," Nature, 1879, 20:405. Huxley's recantation evoked
the following response from Michael Foster: "Bye the bye, you did that Bathybius business with
the most beautiful grace-I wish you would sell me-a little morsel of that trick." Huxley Papers
(Imperial College), Vol. 4, MS 215.
'09T. H. Huxley, A Manual of the Anatomy of the InvertebratedAnimals (London: J. & A. Churchill,
1877), pp. 78-87.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
531
Bathybiusdied more slowly in Germany, where it had been nursed by
philosophic doctrine as well as scientific orthodoxy. Haeckel's principal reply
to the Challengerresults was an essay in Kosmos(1877) entitled "Bathybius
und die Moneren." 110 Here he presented a painstaking review of the history
of his Monera, of Bathybius,and of the criticisms of both. The real error
committed by Bathybius
investigators, he insisted, was one of premature generalization. Thomson, Carpenter, and Bessels had definitely observed fresh Bathybius
in the North Atlantic; "' its "amoeboid movements" were proof of that. But
the Challengerexpedition had been unable to find it elsewhere. The obvious
conclusion for Haeckel was that he and others had been wrong to assume
its distribution to be worldwide, when in fact it was, like most organisms,
quite limited." 12
Haeckel's criticism was especially directed, not at the Challengerscientists,
of whom he spoke highly, but at Huxley, who had forsaken his own discovery
in the face of limited negative evidence. After quoting Huxley's retraction
in Nature,Haeckel commented:
These are the words of Professor Huxley, which stirred such concern and,
according to widespread opinion, have dealt the death-blow to poor Bathybius.
But the more the real parent of Bathybius shows himself inclined to give up his
child as hopeless, the more I feel bound, as its godfather, to look after its rights,
and if possible, to reestablish recognition for its diminished life processes."13
These comments by Haeckel were the last substantive scientific additions
to the Bathybiusepisode, although he kept it alive in his popular writings
into the 1880s."14 In England it flared up again in 1887, when the Duke
"0Haeckel, "Bathybius und die Moneren," pp. 299-300. This essay also appeared as a chapter
in Haeckel's Das Protistenreich(1878), a work which I was able to examine only in the French
translation by Jules Soury, Le Regne des Protistes(Paris: C. Reinwald, 1879), Ch. 5.
I"'Haeckel regarded Bathybius and Protobathybiusas probably the same organism; "Bathybius
und die Moneren," p. 301.
112This attitude was also taken by Edmond Perrier in Les colonies aninales et la formation des
organismes(Paris: G. Masson, 1881), pp. 61-63. For other opinions, see Otto Biutschli, "Protozoa,"
in H. G. Bronn, Klassen und Ordnungen des Thier-reichs (Leipzig/Heidelberg: C. F. Wintersche,
1880-1882), Band 1, pp. 180-181; H. A. Nicholson, A Manual of Zoology(6th ed., Edinburgh/London: William Blackwood, 1880), p. 62.
13Haeckel, "Bathybius und die Moneren," p. 300.
114The last of Haeckel's works to support Bathybiuswhich I was able to examine was his Pedigree
of Man and Other Essays (London: Freethought Publishing Co., 1883). English translations of his
A'nthropogeniecontinued to mention it up to 1897. It was omitted entirely from his Systematische
Phylogenie der Protisten und Pflarnzen(1894). Finally in The Wonders of Life (a translation of Die
Lebenswunder,1904, by Joseph McCabe, London: Watts and Co.), Haeckel admitted that Bathybius
"seems according to the latest investigation, not to have the significance ascribed to it" (p. 214).
Nevertheless, this had no effect on the importance of his Monera and archegony. Although the
previous twenty years of research had reduced his non-nucleated Monera to only two types,
the Chromacea (blue-green algae) and bacteria, their position in Haeckel's philosophy was no
less central. In the meantime his theory of archegony had become more sophisticated (ibid., pp.
355-356, 369). Interestingly, after brief disfavor the Monera concept has undergone a revival
of popularity in the twentieth century. See Edmund B. Wilson, The Cell in Developmentand Inheritance
(3rd ed., New York: Macmillan, 1925), pp. 24-25; Herbert F. Copeland, "The Kingdomof Organisms,"
Quarterly Review of Biology, 1938, 13:383-420; R. H. Whittaker, "New Concepts of Kingdoms
of Organisms," Science, 1969, 163:150-159; Lynn Margulis, Origin of EukaryoticCells (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1970).
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532
PHILIP F. REHBOCK
of Argyll found it a convenient subject for satirizing the dogmatic side of
science, which for him included the followers of Darwin and Huxley:
A fine new Greek name was devised for this mother slime, and it was christened
'Bathybius,' from the consecrated deeps in which it lay. The conception ran like
wildfire through the popular literature of science, and here again there was something
like a coming plebiscite in its favour. . . The naturalists of the 'Challenger' began
their voyage in the full Bathybius faith. But the sturdy mind of Mr. John Murray
kept its balance. . . The laboratory in Jermyn Street [where Huxley worked]
was its unfailing source, and the great observer there was its only sponsor. The
ocean never yielded it until it had been bottled."5
Huxley responded immediately. He freely admitted responsibility for the initial
description and naming of Bathybiusbut disavowed quite legitimately any role
in the subsequent claims for its antiquity and evolutionary importance. "That
which interested me in the matter was the apparent analogy of Bathybius with
other well-known forms of lower life. . . . Speculative hopes or fears had
nothing to do with the matter." 116
Huxley's folly was utilized, with similar intent, by William Mallock, the writer
and theologian, in 1890. Mallock's article solicited a delightfully typical response
from the "bishop-slayer," who was by then feeling some exasperation. This
reply is the last recorded event in the history of Bathybius in which its creator
took part:
Bathybius is far too convenient a stick to beat this dog with to be ever given
up, however many lies may be needful to make the weapon effectual.
I told the whole story in my reply to the Duke of Argyll, but of course the
pack give tongue just as loudly as ever. Clerically-minded people cannot be accurate,
even the liberals."7
Although there are no corporeal remains of Bathybius,the episode left behind
one reminder, an addition to the English language:
Bathybial (baJpi - bial) a. [fr. Bathybius + -al] Of or pertaining to bathybius or
the depths at which it is found; belonging to or living in the deepest parts of
the sea. 118
But more important than this etymological novelty are the conclusions which
may be drawn from the case. That Bathybiuswas an error, and an embarrassing
one, there can be no doubt. The stimulus it gave to dredging and the analysis
15 George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, "A Great Lesson," Nineteenth Century, 1887,
22:293-309 (p. 308).
'16Huxley, "Science and the Bishops," Nineteenth Century, 1887, 22:625-641 (p. 638).
"1 Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters,Vol. II, p. 171.
"1 Oxford English Dictionary, 1971, supplement, p. 64.
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BATHYBIUS HAECKELII
533
of marine sediments was significant, "9 but that could not prevent its downfall.
It was not an error of accuracy or of calculation, but rather an error of
interpretation. Bathybiuswas a highly functional concept, an explanatory device
which made sense in the context of mid-nineteenth-century biological and
geological thinking. Independent but concurrent developments in cytology,
protozoology, submarine geology, Precambrian palaeontology, microscopy, and
evolutionary biology converged to produce an intellectual environment congenial
to Bathybiusin the 1860s. That environment had not existed a decade before;
it ceased to exist a decade later. However "peculiar and fantastic" it might
now appear, Bathybius was a rational construction, a snugly fitting piece in
the intricate puzzle of Victorian science. There must have been many who,
by the end of the century, could agree with the comment in Nature that "Bathybius
is dead, but one cannot leave it without the reflection that there are few
naturalists, the young and expert included, but would have given similar
exDlanation of the aDDearances."120
'19Even greater credit is afforded Bathybiusby Pierre-Paul Grass'e ed., Traite de zoologie (Paris:
Mosson, 1952), Tome 1, fas. 1, p. 37.
'20George Murray and V. H. Blackman, "Coccospheres and Rhabdospheres," Nature, 1897,
55:510-511.
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