286 D. D. CUNNINGHAM, 
safely be affirmed that septicemia leading to a fatal result would 
have followed; and it is very probable that had the parasitic 
elements in the excretal solution consisted of dried or encysted 
spores, we should have had a coincident development of the 
parasite parallel to that occurring in the blood cultivations pre- 
viously described. Had this been so we should, following a line 
of argument similar that adopted in reference to the relation of 
Ameba coli to dysentery, have been led to conclude that the 
parasite was the cause of death. 
The phenomena presented by the parasite whose life-history 
forms the subject of the foregoing pages, in the various stages 
of its development, render it somewhat difficult to determine to 
what group of organisms we ought properly to refer it. Inany 
attempt at doing so, the question of its animal or vegetal nature 
need not occupy us, as it appears certainly to belong to that 
series of organisms which in the mean time, at all events, must 
be included in the Protista, the intermediate kingdom to which 
all doubtful organisms wanting in differentiated animal or vegetal 
characters are conveniently referred. There are two groups in 
this no-man’s-land to which it shows certain points of affinity, 
appearing in some respects, indeed, to occupy an intermediate 
position between them. ‘These are the Monadine, as they are 
termed by Cienkowski, or the Protomonadina, as they have been 
subsequently named by Heckel, and the Myxomycetes, which are 
by some still regarded as an order of fungi. It appears to be 
related to the Monadina in the absence of any definite plasmodial 
stage interposed between the zoosporic and the sporangial one, 
and in the fact that individual units developed from single spores 
appear occasionally to proceed to spore formation. On the 
other hand, the complex nature of the sporangia, which are de- 
veloped as the result of the close association and more or less 
complete fusion of distinct zoosporic elements, points to a close 
affinity to the Myxomycetes. In some cases, indeed, the fusion 
of the formative elements advances so far as practically to be 
equivalent to plasmodial formation, but the occurrence of such 
a phenomenon cannot be regarded as normal, the spores, as a 
rule, being developed in groups corresponding to individual 
units, and the fusion in any case being immediately antecedent 
to spore formation. In characters, too, the sporangia closely 
resemble those in certain forms of Myxomycetes. The organic 
granules developed in the walls closely resemble those charac- 
terising some myxomycete sporangia, and the ridging or reti- 
culation of the inner surface of the membrane and the rudi- 
mentary capillitium clearly correspond to myxomycete structures. 
Taking all its characters into consideration, the organism appears 
rather to represent a rudimentary form of the myxomycete group, 
