158 PAST AND PRESENT 
account. This story partakes about equally of inci- 
dents characteristic of the life-history of the lower 
animals and of the lower plants. The fruiting stage 
and the wind dispersal of the spores recall the 
arrangements familiar in the Fungi, and are not 
matched in any section of the animal kingdom; while 
the creeping plasmodium, devouring food as it goes, 
ad, 
Fic, 26.—A MyxomyceTE (COMATRICHA TYPHOIDES) IN FRUIT. 
a, Natural size; b, enlarged. 
is entirely suggestive of animal life, and is not paral- 
leled anywhere in the vegetable kingdom. There is 
no reason to look on the Mycetozoa as a group of 
animals which have taken on certain plant-like char- 
acters, any more than as a group of plants which 
have evolved certain animal characteristics: we 
appear to see in them a very ancient group which 
has come down to us from a time when plants and 
