171 
A MONOGRAPH OF THE MYXOGASTRES. 
A 78H eengented of “ Myxogastres. By Grorce Massez. London: 
et 
The RRR: of this excellent monograph is an event in which 
Yorkshire biologists may be expected to take exceptional interest, 
the author being well known in the county and an old member of 
the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union. But in commending it to the 
notice of all who are interested in the AMyxogastres, we have no 
hesitation in doing so on the strength of its merits alone, as these are 
of a sufficiently high order to give it a creditable position in our 
biological literature. To write anything like an adequate account of 
its contents would be impossible within the limits of an ordinary 
review, and we must therefore confine ourselves to drawing attention 
to some of its more prominent characteristics. In doing so it will 
be convenient to regard it as consisting of three parts, and to con- 
sider these separately in the order in which they occur. 
In the first part, which is brief and introductory, the author deals 
with some of the more characteristic events in the life-cycle of the 
Myxogastres and the various important questions to which they have 
given rise. He does not, however, dwell upon such details as are to 
be found in extenso in ordinary text-books, but addresses himself 
chiefly to a discussion of the systematic position of the group and 
their classification on what may be termed phylogenetic principles. 
Naturally the first point to be considered is the fundamental question 
as to whether they are animals or plants, a nome which he deals 
with in an ingenious way, and with a brea and minuteness of 
knowledge which no reader will fail to ‘cede De Bary, who 
was the first to give a really scientific account of the group, was led, 
on various grounds, so far back as 1858, to place it outside the 
vegetable kingdom, and by zoologists it is now usually claimed as a 
group of the Protozoa. 
In contesting the validity of this claim, Mr. Massee, in the first 
place, maintains, and with justice, that in searching for the affinities 
of a group of organisms, the phenomena of the entire life-cycle should 
be taken into consideration. He then reminds us that in the 
organism in question, the life-cycle consists of two sharply contrasted 
phases, the vegetative and the reproductive, and that it is from the 
characteristics of the former alone, that the animal affinities of the 
Myxogastres are commonly inferred. Indeed, De Bary himself 
found the mark of separation between them and plants in the forma- 
tion of plasmodia by the coalescence of naked, protoplasmic, swarm- 
cells, or their aggregation, during the vegetative phase of their exist- 
ence. When, however, we turn to the reproductive phase, the many 
June 1892 
