Some Questions which they Suggest. 75 



(2) asexual spores, or as they are called parthenospores ; (3) 

 male spores ; and (4) female spores. So marvellously 

 complicated are the modes in which Nature is capable of 

 differentiating and using to attain the same end by different 

 roads that which seems the simplest thing in life a 

 minute piece of naked protoplasm. 



In the swarm-spore state the myxies may thus seem to 

 claim relationship with the Algas and Fungi, but it ia 

 doubtful whether much stress can be laid on this sugges- 

 tion, for (1) the existence of these cells as reproductive 

 spores is a wide-spread fact, and occurring in remote 

 groups of organisms, has perhaps but little value in 

 classification ; and (2) the mode in which myxies reproduce 

 through swarm spores is entirely different from that pursued 

 by any Alga or Fungus. It is, as we have already shown, 

 neither by parthenogenesis of the ordinary kind, nor by 

 conjugation, but by the fusion of a great number of swarm 

 spores, whether from the same or different sporangia, into 

 a single mass of plasmodium. 



But if we turn towards the animal kingdom, we shall 

 find that its claim to include the myxies in the swarm 

 spore stage is very strong. 



A mass of naked protoplasm, furnished with a nucleus 

 and vacuoles, capable of pushing forward pseudopodia, 

 and moving by these means, capable of including and 

 digesting food, and also of encystment this is a descrip- 

 tion which will fit indifferently the swarm-spore of a myxie 

 and the well-known Amseba, and we are thus brought to see 

 that close relationship, to which we have already referred, 



