394 The Botanical Gazette. [December, 
and although the present account is necessarily incomplete, 
it may serve to call attention to a subject which, beyon 
question, offers a productive field for further investigation. 
Historically the story of the group is not a long one, yet is 
instructive in showing the absurdities to which the careless 
and wholesale description of new species may lead. Chond- 
romyces aurantiacus, for example, has, if the writer’s conclu- 
sions are correct, been placed in three separate genera of 
hyphomycetous fungi, although possessing no trace of hyphe 
or of spores, the slight striation of the shrunken cystophore 
in the one case and the general external appearance of the 
cysts or of their contents in the other, having been made to 
assume these functions for descriptive purposes. The same is 
also true to a less degree of C. crocatus, although from its 
apparent rarity it seems to have escaped an extended syn- 
onymy. Whether any of the other forms enumerated below’ 
have been previously described the writer is unable to say; 
yet it seems very improbable that the spores of such com- 
mon and conspicuous forms as Myxococcus rubescens and M. 
virescens should have escaped description, at least as chromo- 
genous micrococci. The species of Cystobacter Schroter seem 
with little doubt to belong to the present family, and should 
probably be referred to Chondromyces, possibly C. aurantiacus, 
which in artificial cultivation produces a variety of abnorma 
forms and becomes ‘‘kastanien braun” when kept moist for 
a certain period. The descriptions of Schréter, however, are 
not sufficient to render any definite conclusion possible in the 
absence of proper figures. 
MY XOBACTERIACEE. 
Motile, rod-like organisms, multiplying by fission, secreting 
a gelatinous base, and forming pseudoplasmodium-like ie 
gations before passing into a more or less highly develope 
- cyst-producing resting state, in which the rods may genes 
encysted in groups without modification or may be converte 
and species. In all cases they are typically elongate, easel 
times attaining a length of 15 and, while living, 
show a tendency to taper slightly towards either extremity 
which disappears when they are killed, the ends becoming 
