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On some of the Fungi found in the Bath District. By C. E. Broome. 
(Read February 11th, 1874. ) 
ORDER 10. MYXOGASTERS.* 
Myxogasters derive their name from their early condition, in 
which they resemble a creamy mass spreading over rotten wood, 
dead leaves, &c. Following the arrangement adopted by Mr. 
Berkeley in ‘‘ The Outlines of British Fungology,” they constitute 
the 10th Order of Fungi, it is chiefly in their early, or creamy 
state that they differ from other members of the family, and it is 
only when mature that they resemble their nearest allies the 
Trichogasters. When mature they consist of variously shaped, 
stipitate, or sessile peridia of a horny or membranous substance, 
containing generally a mass of threads called a capillitium, mixed 
with a quantity of dusty spores ; on the peridia breaking up the 
spores are dispersed. De Bary, Professor of Botany at Freiburg, 
observed that when the spores were sown on damp, rotten wood, 
or in a drop of water on a slip of glass, they did not produce 
threads like other Fungi, but gave origin to minute, gelatinous 
bodies endowed with a movement similar to that of certain 
animals of a low type, viz., Rhizopods, that they produced cilia, 
and moving about the surface of the glass by their aid, at length 
became stationary, that they then lost their cilia, and after a con- 
siderable increase in bulk or prolongation into branched or 
reticulate masses, they produced clusters of the peridia at the 
expence of their mucous contents ; the peridia gradually became 
invested with a distinct membrane from which processes of a 
horny or filamentous character arose, filling up more or less the 
interior, the interspaces being filled with dusty spores. From the 
similarity of this mode of development to that of some of the 
lower animals, De Bary concluded that the Myxogasters belonged 
properly to the animal and not to the vegetable kingdom, and he 
* Myxogasters from the Greek muxa a mucus, and gaster a stomach. 
