26 OUTLINES OF BRITISH FUNGOI.OGY. 



no organized beings are ever produced from such solutions as 

 contain matters fit to nourish minute animals or vegetables, 

 though where proper precautions have not been taken to ex- 

 clude the possibility of their access, they exist in myriads. 

 That the spores of Fungi do get access somehow or other 

 into very unexpected places is quite another question, and, 

 like many other obscure matters of natural histoiy, may some 

 time or other meet with an easy explanation.^ 



* Since the above was written, Do Bary has stated his views more explicitly 

 respecting the Myxogastres. In Lijcogala epidendruyn he figures filaments 

 very like those of Dasyglaa, a genus of fresh-water Algae. It appears also, as 

 Mr. Currey has seen in Trichia, that the young germinating spores in many 

 species assume the characters of zoospores ; but this does not prove that tliese 

 productions are animals any more than that those Algee in which zoospores 

 occur, are so. StiU less does the existence of sarcode tend to this conclusion, 

 when it is remembered that cellulose, the peculiar distinctive mark in vegetable 

 structure, occurs in undoubted animals. 



