398 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JUNE 
and Prantl, does not appear to have received the recognition it 
well merits. That the family, as predicted in my former paper, 
is likely to prove by no means rumerically insignificant, is indi- 
cated by the additions enumerated below, which have for the 
most part made their appearance by accident, as it were, on 
laboratory cultures designed for other purposes; and it seems 
probable that any systematic attempt to enlarge our knowledge 
of the species could hardly fail to produce interesting results.3 
It may be remembered that, in arranging the nine species 
which formed the nucleus of the order, two sub-groups were 
distinguished; the one including in the single genus Myxococ- 
cus all those forms in which the individuals become trans- 
formed into definite spores during the period of fructification; 
while all the remaining forms were included in the two genera 
Chondromyces and Myxobacter; the individuals in both these 
instances becoming encysted en masse, without being converted 
into definitely formed spores. In the first category those 
species in which the spore mass is permanently encysted or 
definitely coherent at maturity were further distinguished from 
those in which it soon becomes deliquescent, while in the second 
category those forms which produce their cysts free in the air 
(Chondromyces) were separated from those in which the latter 
are formed embedded in a gelatinous matrix, the two species: 
included in the last mentioned class being placed in the genus 
Myxobacter, which, as will be presently seen, may be referred 
with little doubt to Schroeter’s Cystobacter. 
Although all of the forms described below fall under one oF 
the other of the above categories and no new generic types wie 
included among them, the gross structure of the fructifying con- 
_ dition in several of them presents points of no little interest. In 
3Since the present paper was in press Messrs. Pound and Clements in their 
“Rearrangement” of the North American Hyphomycetes (J/innesota Botanical 
Studies, 44) bh ferred the lichenicol pecies of Illosporium to the Myxobacteri@- 
cex. The species of this genus, however, are semi-sclerotic conditions of hyphomy- 
cetous fungi, which, in some instances at least, are connected with species of Nectr» 
and in no case can be mistaken for Myxobacteriae. Why these authors retain the 
Ce 
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is not annarent. 
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