68 The Mycetozoa, and 



represent the individual. The life-circle of the myxie thus 

 exhibits a curious alternation of individualism and col- 

 lectivism an harmonious solution of the problem raised 

 by the claims of the two principles which are found in 

 conflict hi other organisms and states of society. 



DEATH AND EEPRODUOTION. We know that of late years, 

 many interesting theories and questions have been pro- 

 pounded in relation to the great fact of Death, and that 

 the entrance of Death into the great chain of organic life 

 has been watched and studied. 



One view, to which Professor Weismann has given 

 great prominence, is that unicellular organisms possess 

 an unending duration, or, in other words, that though 

 susceptible of death by external force as, e.g., by fire 

 there is no natural death, but on the contrary a potential 

 immortality. He considers death, therefore, to have 

 come in with the rnulticellular organisms, and to take 

 place, as he says, " because a worn-out tissue cannot for 

 ever renew itself, and because a capacity for increase by 

 means of cell division is not everlasting but finite." 



Another view put forward (not by Weismann but by 

 Gotte) holds that death is always connected with re- 

 production, and is a consequence of the latter in the 

 lower animals. 



Lastly may be noticed another view, also propounded by 

 Gotte, that the first form of death is to be found in the 

 phenomenon known as encystment, which occurs when 

 an organism which has been alive and exhibiting the 

 phenomena of motion becomes stationary, develops a cyst 



