Some Questions which they Suggest. 69 



or coat around it, and after a period of rest and suspended 

 animation again revives when the favouring circumstances 

 occur. 



We thus state some of the views with regard to death 

 because we think that it will be found that the life-history 

 of the myxies throws some light upon them. 



Let us, however, first make these remarks : that in the 

 higher organisms we know of death in two forms, the 

 death of a part cast-off, as when we shed a hair or lose a 

 tooth, or as when a tree casts off its dead leaves ; and, 

 secondly, the death which affects the whole organism; 

 and further that reproduction is in a great majority of the 

 higher organisms accompanied by the casting off of some 

 parts of the organism which have been devoted to the 

 nutrition and protection of the young offspring. In plants 

 we know how the floral envelopes drop off, and how the seed 

 vessels are allowed to fall and decay when their duty is 

 done ; and corresponding phenomena exist in the animal 

 world. 



When the plasmodium of the myxie has differentiated 

 itself into the hypothallus and the sporangia, and these 

 have sent forth the spores, how are we to regard the 

 events which have happened ? Is the true view that a 

 parent organism has died ; that the empty sporangium 

 and the stalk, and the capillitium and the hypothallus 

 which are left behind to decay are the dead body of the 

 parent, and that the spores represent the new generation ? 



If this be the true view, and there seems much probability 

 in it, then we have clearly before us an unicellular 



