70 The Mycetozoa, and 



organism of the simplest kind, which exhibits the 

 phenomenon of death, and we cannot say with Weismann 

 that it is with the multicellular organisms that death for 

 the first time occurs. 



On this assumption it further follows that we have in 

 the myxies an instance of the close association of death 

 with reproduction ; and we are reminded of the analogous 

 cases of the mayfly and the butterfly, which die after 

 laying their eggs, and of the death of the male bee after 

 pairing. 



The other view of the facts to which we have referred is 

 that the throwing off of the sporangium and the capillitium, 

 and the shells of the spores, is not the death of the whole 

 parent organism, but the partial death only which occurs 

 when the parts which have become useless are cast off 

 and allowed to die, and in this view there is in the cycle 

 of the myxie's life neither death nor generation, but an 

 everlasting life ; the same protoplasm would be thought 

 of as going on in an eternal round of life, subject only to 

 accretions and to losses. True it would be that the shell 

 of the spore, the coats and foot of the sporangium, and 

 the capillitium which it contains, have been thrown aside 

 and perish ; but the residue of the protoplasm seems to 

 pass- from swarm spores into plasmodium, from plas- 

 modium to swarm spores, and so on in a perpetual round. 

 The swarm spores thus appear not as emanations from 

 the parent but as the parent itself, and the new generation 

 and the old are but one person (if personality may here 

 be spoken of). If we think of death we search without 



