* 



2 The Mycetozoa,) and 



voice, be introduced as a "slime fungus"? and yet this 

 is the only English name of the organisms in question. 

 Some intimates of these ill-named beings try to get over 

 the difficulty by inventing pet names, and call them 

 " myxos," or " myxies," and, on the whole, we incline to 

 adopt the latter word. It is short, and it rhymes with 

 pixies. 



But what are these myxies ? someone will be impatient 

 to say. Are they fungi ? No. Are they mosses ? No. 

 Are they ferns ? No. Are they lichens ? No. At any 

 rate, plants ? That is doubtful. Then surely they are 

 animals ? We do not know. They are living things 

 and beyond that we will not go for the present. 



There is another difficulty in the way of presenting 

 these organisms to the novice : that their forms and 

 structure are so far unlike those of plants or animals with 

 which every one is familiar that we cannot use very well- 

 known terms in describing them, and we shall have to ask 

 permission to employ some special terms, when common 

 ones fail. But we shall endeavour to be as clear as we 

 can, and to readers who will give us their attention we 

 believe that we shall overcome these obstacles, and we 

 believe, too, that a little difficulty in following the exposi- 

 tion will be more than repaid by the interest of the subject. 

 It appears to us that many most interesting biological 

 problems are presented in very simple form by this class 

 of organisms, and we shall not hesitate to refer to these 

 from time to time in the following pages. 



If our reader will turn over the pages and look at the 



