72 The Mycetozoct) and 



him of- a plasmodium which after twenty-five years' 

 residence in an herbarium began, after four or five days' 

 immersion in water, to develop as a beautiful network. 



KELATIONS OF THE GKOUP. The proper position of the 

 myxies in the world of organized beings is a subject on 

 which there has been and still is a great difference of 

 opinion. So profound is the difficulty of the question 

 whether they are animals or vegetables that one of the 

 most careful students of their nature has declared that 

 its solution "depends rather on the general philosophic 

 position of the observer than on facts." 



Those authors who place the myxies in the animal 

 kingdom have generally attached most importance to the 

 swarm spore and plasmodium stages of their existence, 

 and have insisted on their likeness to the protozoa ; the 

 advocates of their vegetable character have mainly dwelt 

 on their method of reproduction on their sporangia and 

 their spores. 



But even assuming them to be vegetables, there remains 

 the question where they are to take their place in that 

 realm of Nature. They were placed among the fungi by 

 Fries, but with a lively consciousness of how entirely they 

 differed from all the other members of the class. ' ' Vegetatio 

 maxime singularis et a reliquorum fungorum prorsus 

 diversa," he says of this group. The fungi seem as a 

 natural group to be well characterized by a prothallus 

 constituted of hyphae generally multicellular whereas 

 the myxies are represented in that stage by the strange 

 plasmodium of which we have said so much. 



