80 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



NOTES ON AN EXHIBIT OF SOME LIVING STAGES 

 OF MYCETOZOA. 



By O. a. Sayce. 

 (Read lefore the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 12th June, 1899 J 

 The life-history of the Mycetozoa is one of peculiar interest. 

 Lately I have cultivated several species, and watched their 

 growth from the spore to the fruiting stage, and although in this 

 note I record nothing new concerning them, the methods I 

 adopted for observation may be of some value to others. For 

 particulars concerning their remarkable life- history and classifica- 

 tion I would refer you to Lister's important " Monograph of the 

 Mycetozoa ;" but any of the recent text-books of either botany 

 or zoology refer to them — the former under Myxomycetes, or 

 "slime fungi;" and the latter Mycetozoa, or "animal fungi." 

 The word " fungi" appears, however, to be an unfortunate one, 

 for, except in the fruiting stage, one fails to see a resemblance 

 to fungi, and their life-history is very different. Lister says 

 (see page 2) " they are a clearly defined group of organisms, 

 separated from all others by the following combinations 

 of characters : — A spore provided with a firm wall pro- 

 duces, on germination, an amoeboid swarm-cell, which soon 

 acquires a flagellum. The swarm-cells multiply by division, and 

 subsequently coalesce to form a plasraodium, which exhibits a 

 rhythmic streaming. The plasmodium gives rise to fruits which 

 consist of supporting structures and spores." 



I have done but little in the collecting of them, but during a 

 visit some months ago to Gippsland, in the forest country I 

 found a number of living plasmodia. They appear in this stage 

 as larger or smaller yellow, white, or brownish, very soft struc- 

 tureless jelly-like or mucilaginous masses, more or less spherical 

 or lobed in outline, or forming a network of reticulated lines 

 adhering to damp surfaces, such as the bark of trees or rotting 

 logs and grass, over which they slowly wander, and from the 

 tissues of which the swarm-cell units, which make up a Plas- 

 modium, have come. During movement the shape is constantly 

 changing. If such a plasmodium be collected with the sub- 

 stratum on which it is situated, and placed in a damp chamber — 

 a wide-mouthed bottle or test tube containing a little water at 

 the bottom, and the neck plugged with cotton wool, answers well 

 — its movements may be watched, and also the interesting 

 changes into the fruiting stage with sporangia of definite shape 

 and structure containing spores. If now some of the spores be 

 taken and placed in a drop of a weak infusion of hay, placed on 

 a micro, cover-slip, and inverted over an excavated glass slide 

 that has had the edges bordering the excavation or cell painted 

 with vaselin, so that you have a hanging drop suspended in a cell 



