Some Questions which they Suggest. n 



into several parts, into delicate pedicels, the coating mem- 

 brane of the sporangia, the hairs of the capillitium, and the 

 spores which in due time are to begin again the circuit 

 of the life-history of the Badhamia, which is in all essen- 

 tial features that of the whole group of myxies. The 

 sporangia in the course of their development sometimes 

 undergo a great change in colour ; for instance, the young 

 sporangia of Comatricha are an ivory white, and they 

 gradually change into a glossy black ; and the groups of 

 little tree-like growths with their developing forms and 

 varying colours, all gathered together within a few square 

 inches, is a sight of great beauty. In the maturity of this 

 sporangium stage of the organism it has lost all its powers 

 of locomotion, it has lost its powers for digestion, and in 

 its stationary condition devotes its energies to the 

 reproduction of the species. The motion of the granules 

 of the protoplasm continues to some extent until the forma- 

 tion of the spores. 



Now, pausing here for a moment, and taking merely the 

 outline of the facts as we have drawn it, we have surely 

 abundance of matter for thought and surprise. Some 

 seventy years ago, Fries, one of the first naturalists who 

 grasped the series of changes through which these organisms 

 pass, compared these changes to the metamorphoses of 

 insects. We get, too, an inkling of the difficulty which 

 naturalists have felt in assigning the myxies either to the 

 animal or the vegetable kingdom : their locomotion and 

 rapacious youth seem to shut them out from the plants ; 

 their stationary condition and their production of sporangia 

 from the animal world. 



