BATHYBIUS HAECKELII. – Gelatinous mud dredged from the bottom of the Atlantic, which T. H. Huxley named thus, identifying in it the primordial living matter of the depths (“organisms without organs” in Haeckel’s sense). In 1879 Huxley himself accepted the inorganic nature of b. H. Haeckel (v.) continued for some time to regard it as an undifferentiated protoplasmic mass, in accordance with the preconceived theory of spontaneous generation.
BIBL.: E. Rädl, Geschichte der biologischen Theorien, II, Leipzig 1909, p. 291 ff.; O. Hertwig, Allgemeine Biologie, Jena 1923, p. 270. Luigi Scrimin