2 THE MYXOMYCETES 



his view of their nature and position when he named the suborder 

 Myxogastres. In 1833, Link, perceiving more clearly the distinctness 

 of the group, substituted the name Myxomycetes. Wallroth used the 

 name in the same year and he is usually credited with it, but he seems 

 strangely to have confused its limitations, apparently regarding it as 

 a synonym for the Gasteromycetes of Fries. Link's usage passed un- 

 challenged for over a quarter of a century. The slime molds were 

 set apart by themselves; they were fungi without question and, of 

 course, plants. 



In 1858 de Bary published the first of his noteworthy studies upon 

 the Myxomycetes, based upon careful observation of their life cycles 

 and particularly upon the transition between the plasmodial and 

 fruiting stages. These studies were greatly amplified in 1859 and 1864. 

 As a result of his investigations de Bary concluded that the relation- 

 ships of the slime molds were with the amoeboid protozoa rather than 

 with the fungi, and to emphasize this viewpoint, proposed the name 

 Mycetozoa — fungous animals. 



In 1884 he modified the group so as to include not only the Myxomy- 

 cetes of Wallroth, but the Acrasieae of van Tieghem. Of this, more 

 later. De Bary's name for the group has, with varying limitations, 

 been since adopted by many distinguished authorities, including 

 Rostafinski, Saville Kent, Zopf, the Listers and Lankester. 



Whatever the position of the slime molds among living organisms 

 may finally be determined to be, their actual study has been left 

 almost entirely to the botanists, and particularly to the mycologists. 

 By vote of the international botanical congresses of Vienna (1905), 

 Brussels (1910), and Cambridge (1930), the nomenclature of the group 

 is fixed as beginning with Linnaeus' Species plantarum of 1753. Linnaeus, 

 to be sure, knew little about the fungi or slime molds, and apparently 

 cared less. Nevertheless, the fixing of this date permits taking into 

 account the work of a number of active students of the group dating 

 from the closing years of the 18th century. Chief among these is 

 perhaps Bulliard, in whose extensive work "Histoire des Champignons 

 de la France" (1791) may be found a number of recognizable descrip- 

 tions and illustrations of slime molds, unexcelled up to that time. 

 Noteworthy references to certain species were published still earlier 

 between 1753 and 1791 by Gleditsch (1753), Schaeffer (1762-1774), 

 Miiller (1777), Batsch (1783-1789), Leers (1789) and others. Since 

 that time a host of students has given more or less attention to the 

 group, of whom the outstanding names up to the time of Rostafinski 

 are Hoffmann, Schrader, Sowerby, Persoon, Fries, Ehrenberg, Link, 

 Fuckel, Schweinitz, Berkeley, Curtis. 



