CHAPTER IX 



FUNGUS ALLIES THE MYXOMYCETES 



(Slime Moulds, Mycetozoa) 



For many years the group of organisms known under the 

 various names of Myxomycetes, Myxogasters, Mycetozoa, or slime- 

 moulds were associated with the fungi and curiously enough were 

 classed with the puff-balls because of their superficial resemblances. 

 Instead of having relations with this highest order of fungi they 

 stand at the bottom round of plant life, if, indeed, they are plants 

 at all, for some botanists even insist that they are not plants. 

 The zoologists, however, rarely claim them and these exquisite or- 

 ganisms are likely to be neglected from both sides of the biological 

 household. 



A slime-mould is an organism varying in size from -a dime to a 

 dinner plate, consisting in the growing stage of a naked mass of 

 yellowish or whitish slimy protoplasm called a plasmodium, pos- 

 sessing a creeping motion, loving darkness rather than light, and 

 living in old rotting logs or stumps, or occasionally on spent tan- 

 bark, or among the rubbish of old chip yards. After a period of 

 feeding on the juices of decay resulting in a growth which extends 

 through a longer or shorter period, it rolls itself up into a ball, or 

 in most cases a series of small balls, forms a thickened wall about 

 its substance and divides into a multitude of microscopic dust-like 

 spores. 



To understand its life history more in detail, we may com- 

 mence with a single spore and follow its course upward until it 

 results in reproducing itself in spores again. The spore on find- 

 ing itself in a suitable condition of warmth and moisture com- 

 mences to absorb water, swells up and finally bursts its softened 

 shell and emerges as a mere naked bit of jelly. It then forms 

 from streaming portions of itself delicate cilia, by the lashing of 

 which it manages to wriggle its way about to better feeding 

 grounds than it happened to be left in as a spore. Besides 



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