AN AQUATIC MYXOMYCETE. 75 



the myxamoebse slowly moved about the field, each with a clearly 

 marked nucleus aud a slowly pulsating vacuole, and at 12.32 each of 

 the active myxanioeboe began to come slowly to rest, and rounded 

 itself off as a cyst. At 1.37 the two spherical cysts were lying in the 

 same places and their vacuoles only making extremely feeble pul- 

 sations at very long intervals : shortly afterwards they had completely 

 come to rest — a condition I shall have more to say about shortly. 



It occasionally happens that the process of germination is even less 

 normal than in the case mentioned above. The drawings in fig. 16 

 will illustrate this, and I may describe these before proceeding to offer 

 some explanation of both sets of phenomena. In this case the spores 

 were sown at 4 p.m., and left to germinate during the night: at 10-30 

 next morning many of them were germinating, and the figures were 

 drawn from one that was watched without intermission during the 

 next two hours. At 10.46 one of the spores (fig. 16, or) emitted its 

 contents bodily as a spherical mass of hyaline naked protoplasm, in 

 which were numerous very fine bright granules, and a large well-formed 

 nucleus : during the course of the next quarter of an hour several 

 (2 to 4) small vacuoles kept making their appearance and very slowly 

 pulsating (fig, 16, b), and a feeble "frothing," so to speak, of the 

 protoplasm went on (fig. 16, c) until about 11.20, the granules and 

 nucleus slowly changing their positions at the same time. At 11.26 

 (compare the figures bracketted fig. 16, d) three faint lines made their 

 appearance in the mass of protoplasm, and these disappeared in about 

 half a minute as quickly as they had come, the slow movements and 

 "frothing " still continuing : at 11.33 a feebly marked line appeared 

 half way across the protoplasm, and this, too, only lasted for about 

 half a minute. Five minutes later (e, fig. 16) not a trace of these 

 lines could be detected; but at 11.45, in place of the one not very 

 conspicuous nucleus seen shortly before, there appeared two nuclei 

 imperfectly separated by a line passing about half way across the 

 protoplasm (fig. 16, /) : this line also disappeared during the next three 

 minutes, but at 12.1 (fig. 16, g) the sphere of protoplasm was unmis- 

 takably divided across by a line passing between the tAvo nuclei, and 

 two minutes later these two nucleated portions commenced to separate. 

 It now became evident that the piDtoplasmic mass had formed a very 

 thin membranous envelope on its exterior, and, in fact, the two masses 

 of nucleated protoplasm escaped one after the other (through separate 



