bathybius

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“
Our biologists therefore stifled bathybius, perhaps with justice, certainly with prudence, and left protoplasm to its fate Any one who reads Professor Allman's address above referred to with due care will see that he was uneasy about protoplasm, even at the time of its greatest popularity.

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Definitions (2)

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  1. A name given by Huxley to masses of so-called animal matter said to have been found covering the sea-bottom at great depths (over 2,000 fathoms), and in such abundance as to form in some places deposits upward of 30 feet in thickness. It was described as consisting of a tenacious, viscid, slimy substance, exhibiting under the microscope a network of granular, mucilaginous matter, which expands and contracts spontaneously, forming a very simple organism, and corresponding in all respects to protoplasm (which see). Embedded in it were calcareous bodies with an organic structure, called discoliths, coccoliths, and coccospheres, which seemed to belong to bathybius as such. The existence of any such living substance is now generally denied.

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Examples (13)

  • The lowest and most formless moneron is the bathybius, discovered by Thomas Huxley, a network of recticular mucus, which in the greatest depths of the sea, as far down as 7,000 metres, covers stone fragments and other objects, but are also found in less depths, in the Mediterranean Sea, for instance. —  The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality
  • For after scientists like K. E. von Baer and others had already declared it probable that this bathybius is only a precipitate of organic relics, no less a person than the discoverer of the bathybius, in the "Annals of Natural History," 1875, {133} and in the "Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science," 1875, has suggested that the whole discovery is but gypsum, which was precipitated in a gelatinous condition. —  The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality
  • Organic form which, in its lowest stages, is so simple, like the moneron and the bathybius, and which stands still lower than a cell, is, moreover, something which there is no difficulty in explaining from inorganic matter. —  The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality
  • About the same time bathybius, which at one time bade fair to supplant it upon the throne of popularity, died suddenly, as I am told, at Norwich, under circumstances which did not transpire, nor has its name, so far as I am aware, been ever again mentioned So much for the conclusions in regard to the larger aspect of life taken as a whole which must follow from confining life to protoplasm; but there is another aspect--that, namely, which regards the individual. —  Luck or Cunning?
  • Our biologists therefore stifled bathybius, perhaps with justice, certainly with prudence, and left protoplasm to its fate Any one who reads Professor Allman's address above referred to with due care will see that he was uneasy about protoplasm, even at the time of its greatest popularity. —  Luck or Cunning?
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  1. New Latin, from Greek βαθύς, deep, + βίος, life.
 

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