FC Pe Tee 
VOLUME XXXVII : NUMBER 6 
BOTANICAL GAZETTE 
JUNE, 1904 
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE CRYPTOGAMIC LABOR- 
ATORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. LVI. 
NOTES ON THE MYXOBACTERIACEAE., 
ROLAND THAXTER. 
(WITH PLATES XXVI AND XXVII) 
Since the appearance in this journal (June 1897) of the 
author’s second paper on this group, comparatively little atten- 
tion has been given to it, and with few exceptions one finds no 
mention of it in current text-books, or in bacteriological litera- 
ture. Dr. Migula in his otherwise very complete System der 
Bacterien passes it with scant mention in his preliminary volume, 
and omits it wholly from the systematic part; where one finds 
such forms as Beggiatoa or Amoebobacter included in their proper 
connection. The Pfanzenfamilien also still appears to contain no 
mention of it, despite the inclusion of a menagerie of organisms 
whose zoology is orthodox to a degree. 
In the second notice of the Myxobacteriaceae just referred to, 
mention was made of two papers by the late Dr. Zukal, in which 
he maintained the mycetozoan nature of these forms in connec- 
tion with a new theory of the constitution of the myxomycetous 
plasmodium, based on his interpretation of the conditions seen 
by him in Chondromyces crocatus. In a third paper (Ber. Deutsch. 
Bot. Gesell. 15: 542. 1897), however, he has discarded this 
opinion in favor of the writer’s view of their nature, although 
still unable to abandon the idea that the gelatinous matrix asso- 
ciated with their vegetative condition may be protoplasmic. He 
further calls attention to the fact that Myxobacter aureus Thax. is 
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