The Duke of Argyll, in telling the story of _Bathybius_, says that my mind was "caught by this new and grand generalisation of the physical basis of life." I never have been guilty of a reclamation about anything to my credit, and I do not mean to be; but if there is any blame going, I do not choose to be relegated to a subordinate place when I have a claim to {323} the first. The responsibility for the first description and the naming of _Bathybius_ is mine and mine only. The paper on "Some Organisms living at great depths in the Atlantic Ocean," in which I drew attention to this substance, is to be found by the curious in the 8th volume of the _Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science_, and was published in the year 1868. Whatever errors are contained in that paper are my own peculiar property; but neither at the meeting of the British Association in 1868, nor anywhere else, have I gone beyond what is there stated; except in so far that, at a long-subsequent meeting of the Association, being importuned about the subject, I ventured to express, somewhat emphatically, the wish that the thing was at the bottom of the sea. What is meant by my being caught by a generalisation about the physical basis of life I do not know; still less can I understand the assertion that _Bathybius_ was accepted because of its supposed harmony with Darwin's speculations. That which interested me in the matter was the apparent analogy of _Bathybius_ with other well-known forms of lower life, such as the plasmodia of the Myxomycetes and the Rhizopods. Speculative hopes or fears had nothing to do with the matter; and if _Bathybius_ were brought up alive from the bottom of the Atlantic to-morrow, the fact would not have the slightest bearing, that I can discern, upon Mr. Darwin's speculations, or upon any of the disputed problems of biology. It would merely be one elementary organism the more added to the thousands already known. {324}