INTRODUCTORY 9 



nearly thirty years. The slime-moulds were set apart by themselves ; 

 they were fungi without question and, of course, plants. 

 ^ If the hypha is the morphological test of a fungus, then it is plain 

 that the slime-moulds are not fungi. No myxomycete has hyphse, 

 nor indeed anything at all of the kind. Nevertheless, there are cer- 

 tain parasitic fungi, Chytridiaceae for example, whose relationships 

 plainly entitle them to a place among the hyphate forms that have 

 no hyphae whatever in the entire round of their life-history. These 

 are, however, exceptional cases and really do not bear very closely on 

 the question at issue. 



Physiologically, the fungi are incapable of independent existence, 

 being destitute of chlorophyl. In this respect the slime-moulds are 

 like the fungi ; they are nearly all saprophytes and absolutely destitute 

 of chlorophyl. Unfortunately this physiological character is identi- 

 cally that one which the fungi share with the whole animal world, 

 so that the startling inquiry instantly rises, are the slime-moulds 

 plants at all ? Are they not animals ? Do not their amoeboid spores 

 and Plasmodia ally them at once to the amoeba and his congeners, to 

 all the monad, rhizopodal world? This is the position suggested by 

 DeBary in 1858, and adopted since by many distinguished authorities, 

 among whom may be mentioned Saville Kent, of England, and 

 Dr. William Zopf, of Germany, in Die Pilzthiere, 1885. Rosta- 

 finski was a pupil of DeBary's. However, his volume on the slime- 

 moulds was written after leaving the laboratory; and no doubt with 

 the suggestion of his master still before his mind, he adopts the title 

 Mycetozoa, as indicating a closer relationship with the animal world, 

 but our leading authority really has little to say in regard to the 

 matter.^ 



Dr. Schroeter, a recent writer on the subject, after showing the 

 probable connection between the phycochromaceous Algae and the 

 simplest colorless forms, namely, the Schizomycetes, goes on to re- 

 mark: "At the same point where the Schizomycetous series take 

 rise, there begin certain other lines of development among the most 

 diminutive protoplasmic masses. . . . Through the amoebae one 



^ "Die Myxomyceten sind ebenso den Pilzen wie den echten Thieren ver- 

 •wandt." — Rostafinski; closing sentence of the Versuch, thesis for his doctorate 

 at the University of Strasburg, 1873. 



