154 _ GILBERT C. BOURNE. 
between Protozoa as unicellular, and Metazoa as multicellular 
organisms, I should hardly have thought it worth while to 
insist upon this had not Mr. Sedgwick written “that an 
organism may consist of one cell or of several cells in associa- 
tion with one another, We draw the most fundamental dis- 
tinction between the two kinds of organism, and we divide the 
animal kingdom into two great groups to receive them. Asa 
proof of the importance which we attach to this feature of 
organisation we assert that a man is nearer, morphologically, 
to a tapeworm than a tapeworm is to a parameecium.” 
Botanists, who have the great advantage of studying the 
physiology concurrently with the morphology of their subject, 
make no fundamental division into Protophyta and Metaphyta. 
For them, unicellular plants, hypopolycytial plants, Fungi and 
Algze are alike Thallophyta, and a passage from Goebel may 
serve to illustrate the point of view which leads them to classify 
together organisms which, from the point of view of “ inde- 
pendent life units,” would appear widely separate. ‘‘ From 
this initial stage ”—a single small cell—“ the process of de- 
velopment may advance, yet still within the limits of a single 
cell, and whilst the cell increases in size, often reaching 
dimensions without parallel in the vegetable kingdom, either 
the differentiation of the cell-contents or that of the external 
form, as shown by the branching, may make most rapid pro- 
gress, In other cases the growth of the cells is accompanied 
by cell-division, the thallus becoming multicellular, and the 
single cell producing, according to the nature of the plant, 
a cell row, or a cellular filament, a cell surface or simple tissue 
layer, or lastly a cell mass increasing in every direction,” 
polycytial condition, and the so-called non-cellular condition of Cceloblaste 
and Opalina might appropriately be called hypopolycytial, the preposition 
§mo being used in a modifying sense, as expressing the intermediate stage 
between one and many. The term syncytial, which is now used in a loose 
sense, is strictly applicable to the early condition of the plasmodia of the 
Myxomycetes, which are formed by the fusion of many units in a monocytial 
condition, and are therefore different from organisms which exhibit a hypo- 
polycytial condition. In later stages the nuclei of the plasmodia multiply by 
division ; thus the hypopolycytial is added to the syncytial condition, 
