592 C. CLIFFORD DOBELL. 
short way, and then regresses. But in this process two 
each capable of sporulating—so 
that division is really completed physiologically, though 
individuals are formed 
not morphologically. 
Now if my interpretation be correct—as I believe it is—it 
has some interesting results. In the first place, it has an 
important bearing upon the problem of the affinities of 
the Bacteria. Although there can, I think, be little doubt 
that the Bacteria are a very heterogeneous group, yet they 
present—as a whole—some well-defined features. And if we 
consider these, it seems to me that their affinities are not with 
the yeasts, as is often supposed, but in part with the Algze 
and in part with other organisms. All recent work appears 
to me to show that the yeasts are really a low group of Fungi, 
which is properly placed in or near the Ascomycetes. 
The similarity between the “ 
conjugation ” of the disporic 
Bacteria and the conjugation of yeasts furnished a strong 
piece of evidence in favour of the close kinship of these two 
eroups—a piece of evidence which was, to me, wholly puzzling, 
but which is now, I think, shown to be false. My observa- 
tions on B. spirogyra refute, I think, one of the strongest 
arguments in favour of the affinities of the Bacteria with the 
yeasts.! . 
There is one other point I must mention before I conclude, 
and that is with regard to the general phenomenon of 
sex. As is well known, Schaudinn—in his last papers (cf. 
Schaudinn, 1905)—advanced the view that sexuality is a 
fundamental property of living matter, having arisen when 
life itself arose—‘‘so halte ich die Befruchtung fiir einen 
allen Lebewesen zukommenden Vorgang” (p. 34). This 
idea has been taken up and extended by Prowazek (1907), 
who has sought to show that sexuality is universal in the 
Protista, and that it is in some way correlated with the 
“diphasic nature’’ of protoplasm. How “sol”-phases and 
“ vel ’-phases of colloidal substances are connected (outside 
! The name “Schizomycetes” is, I think, quite misleading when 
applied to the Bacteria, and should be dropped. 
