THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 91 



volume can scarcely be described as entertaining to the gen- 

 eral reader, but all who have a working knowledge of the 

 forms discussed will find it very valuable. The general read- 

 er with a taste for investigation will find it interesting for the 

 text is clearly written and illustrated by nearly two hundred 

 accurate drawings. The mycolgist will welcome the very ex- 

 tensive bibliography which follows each section. The vol- 

 ume is bound in green cloth and is for sale on this side of the 

 world by The Macmillan Company of New York. 



Among the familiar sights of our spring woods are 

 patches of shining red, orange, or white that appear on dead 

 leaves, rotten logs, old stumps and the bark of trees, especial- 

 1\- where sap has oozed out. Careful observation of such 

 patches show that they are not fixed to the substratum hut 

 move about with a slow- streaming motion much like that exhib- 

 ited bv the amoeba. These curious patches consist of masses 

 of naked protoplasm which live like fungi on decaying 

 vegetable matter and are apparently among the lowest forms 

 of life. Scientists are not entirely agreed as to whether these 

 forms should be classed as animals or plants, but from the tact 

 that after a ])rc-liminar\- period of growth, the component parts 

 put on cell-walls of cellulose and form >i)orangia containing 

 spores they are pretty generally regarded as plants. The 

 group has been variously named Mycetozoa, Myxogasters, and 

 Myxomycetes, but the last mentioned name seems to have the 

 preference. To the field naturalist they are all "Slime 

 Moulds". There are about three hundred species in Amer- 

 ica but the only botanist who know^s much about them is Dr. 

 Thomas H. McBride who has spent the greater part of a life- 

 time in their study. As long ago as 1890 he published a 

 monograi)h on the "Myxomycetes of Eastern Iowa" and in 

 1899, he expanded this into a little book on "North American 



