le Lesson,"
apparently directed against my infallibility--a doctrine about which I
should be inclined to paraphrase Wilkes's remark to George the Third,
when he declared that he, at any rate, was not a Wilkite. But I really
should be glad to think that there are people who need the warning,
because then it will be obvious that this raking up of an old story
cannot have been suggested by a mere fanatical desire to damage men
of science. I can but rejoice, then, that these misguided enthusiasts,
whose faith, in me has so far exceeded the bounds of reason, should be
set right. But that "want of finish" in the matter of accuracy which
so terribly mars the effect of the "Great Lesson," is no less
conspicuous in the case of the "Little Lesson," and, instead of
setting my too fervent disciples right, it will set them wrong.

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 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 eighth 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 _Bathybi