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food. He has repeatedly seen them caught by the pseudopodia of the 
swarm-cells, ingested in the vacuoles, and gradually dissolved. 
Yet, notwithstanding the fact that there are some exceptions to the 
rule, DeBary definitely states that “the food is taken in during the swarm- 
cell condition only in the fluid state or state of solution, and this is also 
the case, at least in most instances, with the plasmodia.”’ 
It is quite evident, as Massee has shown, that DeBary deduced all his 
reasons against the vegetable nature of these organisms from the vege- 
tative stage. In his monograph on the group, Massee combats step by step 
the position taken by DeBary. He gives the following arguments in 
support of his views: (1) The frequent presence of cellulose in the cell 
walls of spores and sporangia; (2) the frequent separation from the pro- 
toplasm, during the period of spore formation, of a substance homologous 
with the substance separated during the same period in the Ascomycetes, 
ete. This forms the capillitium. (8) The frequent separation of lime from 
the protoplasm at the commencement of the reproductive stage. (4) Agree- 
ment with many fungi in contrivance for spore dissemination. (5) The 
production by free cell formation of spores protected in the early stage 
by a wall of cellulose, which eventually becomes differentiated, and, as 
stated by DeBary, ‘behaves toward reagents in a similar manner to 
cuticularized plant cell-membranes and to spore-membranes in the fungi.” 
(6) The analogy with undoubted members of the vegetable kingdom, as 
Hydrodictyon, where the naked motile swarm-cells coalesce to form a net. 
Massee claims that the observations upon the vegetative stage alone 
furnish no more convincing proof that the phenomena peculiar to it are 
incompatible with a condition of vegetable organisms than are the amoe- 
boid forms in such algz as the Volvocinee. 
The presence of cellulose in the stalk cells and spore walls of the 
Dictyosteliacee may be adduced as an argument for the plant affinities of 
the higher Acrasiec. 
Thaxter suggests another possible line of genetic connection of the 
Mycetozoa with plants, through the Myrobacteriacew. He places the Myxo- 
bacteriacee in the Bacteria, or Schizomycetes, on account of the homologies 
in the reproduction which they present. In one stage they are a mass of 
rods, having a slow progressive motion and reproducing rapidly by fis- 
sion. They are distinguished, however, from other bacteria by having 
two definitely recurring periods in their life ceycle—“‘one of vegetation, the 
other of fructitication or pseudofructification through the simultaneous and 
