472 



APPENDIX. 



The points concerning the development and nutritive phenomena of the Myxomy- 

 cetes thus verified through personal investigation, are accepted by the author as 

 affording the strongest confirmation of his views previously expressed, to the effect 

 that these organisms have nothing whatever to do with Fungi, but are rightly refer- 

 able to the Protozoic division of the animal series. Among these, their correlation 

 may be accomplished with the utmost ease, their entire life-cycle, indeed, being 

 precisely parallel in kind, though differing in degree, with what obtains among the 

 ordinary Flagellate Infusoria. A primary flagelliferous phase, an intermediate repent 

 amoeboid condition, and a final encysted sporiferous state, these three represent the 

 normal life-cycle of either a Myxomycetan or a simple monadiform animalcule. 

 The only distinction manifested on the part of the Myxomycetes, and that, as just 

 stated, being one only of degree, and not of kind, consists in the fact that the 

 final act, that of encystment, and the resolution of the body into spores, is in this 

 group accomplished by a mass of coalescing or conjugating units, which conse- 

 quently produce a relatively colossal spore-receptacle or sporangium the so-called 

 Fungus while in the case of the typical Flagellata it is an isolated monad, or two 

 or a few conjugated units only, that build up the relatively minute, but otherwise 

 morphologically and physiologically identical reproductive structure. 



In every structural detail, and in every successive stage of their life-history, the 

 Myxomycetes or Mycetozoa, from their first exit from the spore until their final 

 resolution into similar reproductive elements, may be consistently correlated with 

 the typical Protozoa, and with them alone. While in their compound aggrega- 

 tion, their production of a horny rete or capillitium, and frequent excretion of spicular 

 elements, a departure is made in the direction of the Sponges, the simply flagellate 

 condition of the spore-derived units, and the capacity possessed by them to ingest 

 food-substances at all parts of their periphery, demonstrate their nearest affinity 

 with the simple Flagellata Pantostomata, and of which they may be accepted as 

 representing the most complex factors. 



This decision arrived at by the author concerning the affinities of the Myxomy- 

 cetes receives additional and highly substantial support in connection with the 

 description, by Surgeon-major D. D. Cunningham, of the life phenomena of certain 

 microscopic organisms developed in the intestinal canal and faecal evacuations of 

 man, cows, and other animals, recorded in the ' Quarterly Journal of Microscopical 

 Science' for April 1881.* Under the title of Protomyxomyces coprinarius, is therein 

 described an organism which, while presenting an infinity of polymorphic expres- 

 sions, is reducible in a like manner to the three component terms common to 

 the two groups of the Myxomycetes and ordinary monads, and which, indeed, 

 as intelligently recognized by Dr. Cunningham, occupies a position precisely 

 midway between these two series. With the typical Myxomycetes, Protomyxomyces 

 agrees in so far as that the usually relatively large sporangium represents the 

 final disintegration into spores of a multitude of closely associated amoeboid 

 elements, surrounded by a common membranous envelope studded with organic 

 granules, these amoeboid elements having again commenced existence as simple 

 flagellate monads Dr. Cunningham's so-called "zoospores." From the typical 

 Myxomycetes, on the other hand, Protomyxomyces differs in that the amoeboid 

 beings thus building up the compound sporangium do not coalesce intimately with 

 one another so as to form a common plasmodium, but, while closely approximated, 

 remain individually distinct, each amoeboid unit separating into an independent 

 spore-mass after the manner of the typical Flagellata. 



* First published as an Appendix to the " Fifteenth Annual Report of the Sanitary Commission 

 of the Government of India." 



END OF VOL. I. 



