136 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



it would he superfluous to invoke the aid of a cognitic or other 

 deHcately stiniuhis-perceptive type of energy. But from all 

 that we know even the biotic fails to meet this requirement, 

 while the failure to explain the energetics of cell-division, the 

 exact inequality that at times characterizes such divisions, 

 and the future role that the derivative cells play, forces us to 

 the acceptance of a more perfect and energy-utilizable kind 

 than either the biotic or the electric. 



Want of space prevents us doing more than glance at the 

 life-phenomena of other rather simple nucleate organisms. 

 But some of the Myxomycetes like Badhamia idricularis are 

 highlv instructive, and have been fairlv often and carefullv 

 watched by the writer and his students. When in the "stream- 

 ing" state its protoplasm is richly studded with nuclei, each 

 of which encloses one, two, or even three nucleoli. At this 

 time the viscous foamy yellow mass shows marked chemotactic 

 response to appropriate food, also marked response to gravity, 

 to light, and to moisture at least. It absorbs food particles 

 in quantity, and churns these up in its endoplasmic substance 

 into fine material that is digested and assimilated so as to cause 

 pronounced gro^'th. All of these energized responses are 

 balanced and combined into resultant action that is most 

 satisfying for the entire organism. 



It also frequently shows nucleo-nucleolar chromatin division 

 with resulting multiplication of nuclei. Though we are still 

 in doubt as to what may constitute sexual fusions, such can 

 be left aside in view of the many other points that raise Bad- 

 hamia above the Acaryota, alike in structure and energy- 

 response. 



In this soft viscous state, then, it continues to show alike 

 vegetative or biotic phenomena, and irritable chromatin or 

 cognitic phenomena. But if water be gradually "VNathdra^Ti, 

 and all the better if the temperature be kept at 2-10° C, the 

 mass dries gradually, till it may appear as a fine dry film on 

 Stereum or other nutritive fungus, and then it can be kept 

 , as a scarcely recognizable streak for months. Here the cog- 

 nitic activity has been reduced we believe to its lowest ebb, 

 and the biotic also is about as much reduced. But that a 

 reserve of highly perfect energy lingers there, sufficient to 

 again energize the organism, is shoA\'n when it is once more 

 placed in moist and appropriately warm environment. For 

 then the film starts to swell, to flow, and, within eight to ten 



