FUNGUSES 7 57 
included in the funguses which show none of these tubes 
nor even cells. This group is called the Myzomycetes, and 
I am sorry to say it has not yet obtained an English 
name for you to remember. A long fight has been kept 
up as to whether these should be regarded as the very 
lowest grade of animals or as the very lowest grade of 
plants; for, widely as a cow may differ from a cabbage, 
when one goes to the bottom of the animal and plant 
ladders, the line between the two is very difficult indeed 
to draw. Most scientific people now are inclined to place 
the group among the plants, but they are of a very 
extraordinary type. Though 450 kinds have already 
been discovered, it is unnecessary to go into details, and 
we may remain content with a general description. The 
most extraordinary fact about them is that they have no 
cell-wall for the greater part of their life, but are merely 
masses of naked protoplasm. They are highly social in 
their habits, and form large colonies, amalgamating into 
a sort of layer of jelly, sometimes of several square 
inches. This layer slowly flows, as it were, over the 
surface of its food, which may be the bark of a tree, a 
piece of spent tan, or rotting wood, and picks up what 
food it requires as it goes along. After a time, when the 
colony feels that it has to make a new family, the proto- 
plasm stops flowing round, and separates into stationary 
patches. These patches collect further into balls, and 
then form a kind of cell-wall, not, so far as we can tell, 
of the ordinary cellulose material, but of its own proto- 
plasm jelly. When the wall is made, the ball rests for 
a time, whilst various spores are formed within it, each 
now provided with a coat. When fully ripe, the ball 
splits, and out pour the spores, which soon slip from their 
coats and begin the foundation of other crawling colonies. 
