SPORANGIA IN THE GENUS STEMONITIS. O 



witlidrawn from sight behind so dark and dull a screen ? What 

 had happened was this : it had achieved its purification, gained 

 its end, and passed into a state of rest ; ready, on reawakening 

 under suitable conditions, to recommence its vital activities 

 with all the vigour of youth perfectly renewed. In other words, 

 the extrusion of its impedimenta had made it possible for the 

 nuclear elements of the plasm to adjust themselves to the 

 process of spore -formation. Immediately before the actual 

 formation of spores, the multitudinous nuclei in the plasm 

 greatly increase in number, the clarification of the plasm clearing 

 the way for the growing nuclei to divide. An equilibrium of 

 balanced colloidal conditions then ensues ; the nuclei becoming 

 suspended in geometrical order, and at equal distances from 

 each other, throughout the entire mass. This is brought about 

 by the mutual opposition of their radiating energies. Each 

 nucleus thus becomes the centre of an individual spore. By a 

 final act of purification the remaining impurities are expelled 

 to the boundaries of the spheres of nuclear influence, where 

 they harden into spore-cases. This is followed by further 

 drying and shrinking ; each case containing its nucleated plasm- 

 speck is separated from the rest, and the process of spore-for- 

 mation is complete. The life of an individual plasmodium passes 

 into the lives of innumerable spores ; the problem of individu- 

 ality, as thus presented by the Mycetozoa, being one you can 

 ponder at leisure. 



A word of warning is perhaps necessary. In principle, the 

 methods of spore-formation are analogous throughout the 

 group ; but not always do the inward processes find such striking 

 expression as in the forms we have been studying. We must 

 not, however, regard these forms as having any special or excep- 

 tional significance. They are but transient phases of the plastic 

 plasm, which arrest us by their beauty and disappear. Even 

 the beauty is in this, as in other cases, the lover's gift ; and 

 to the numberless spores it matters not at all what the shape of 

 the sporangium may be. The delicate network of the capillitium 



