168 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



production appears to be vegetable, should present an intervening, though 

 more prolonged amceba-like condition, seems, I should venture to suppose, 

 no more to demonstrate their animal nature, than do the temporary amoe- 

 boid states of Stephanosphsera, of Volvox, of the Moss, or of Ehizidium, 

 prove that they belong to the Animal Kingdom, seeing, as is well known, 

 that all their analogies and affinities are with plants, and their true posi- 

 tion cannot for a moment be doubted. Professor de Bary, while admitting 

 the force of certain analogies presented by unquestionable plants, con- 

 tends that in his "Mycetozoa" (Myxogastres) the free power of motion 

 occurs, with a greater intensity, and persists through a greater section of 

 their developmental processes, than is at all approached by any plant.* 

 But at least the free power of motion, externally of the enveloping pro- 

 toplasmic mass, and internally of the thereby induced flowing granular 

 contents, and the consequently reptantly locomotive power of the whole 

 could not occur in greater intensity nor more energetically in any " My- 

 cetozoon," nor in any true " Amoeba," than in the thus remarkably tem- 

 porarily modified primordial cells of Stephanosphaera. Had, therefore, 

 de Bary been aware of this condition of the latter, or of those of Yolvox 

 and the Moss, put forward by Hicks, I venture to think that perhaps he 

 would not have insisted so strongly on the extreme view he has taken 

 as regards the Myxogastres. That within the substance of the proto- 

 plasmic mass of the Myxogastres foreign organic bodies have been found, 

 is beyond question ; these, however, have been confined, I believe, to the 

 spores of the plant (?) itself. As to the significancy of the fact, how- 

 ever, and into the discussions which have taken place thereon, I cannot 

 dare to enter. f 



The analogy of the phenomenon here described in Stephanosphsera 

 with that which is known of the development of the Gregarinida will 

 be sufficiently apparent, — the so-called " pseudo-navicellse," like my 

 "primordial cells" of the Stephanosphaera, upon leaving the cyst with- 

 in which they were generated, passing into a temporary amoeboid con- 

 dition ; and though this indeed may be nothing more than an analogy, 

 yet is it decidedly still worth noticing. Nor has the similar analogy 

 existing between the Myxogastres (Mycetozoa, de Bary) and the Gre- 

 garinida been failed to be urged by de Bary in argument for the vali- 

 dity of his conclusions in regard to the animal nature of the former, j 

 Bat the arguments drawn from this analogy could not at least be con- 

 sidered equally valid, if similarly applied in both instances ; for, if this 

 analogy with Gregarinida were admitted to have equal force in the 

 Volvocinacese (here apparently exceptional, and less permanent, as the 

 peculiar condition which gives rise to it may be) to that which de Bary 

 considers it has and lays claim to for it in Myxogastres, its application 

 must, I think, lead to deductions, as regards the chlorospermatous Alga? 



* Loc. cit., p. 166. 



f See ex. gr. : Hoffmann, in "Botanische Zeitung," 1859, p. 202 ; Wigand, in Pring- 

 sheim's " Jahrbiicher fur wiss. Botanik," Band III., pag. 1 ; Cienkowski, ibid., Band III., 

 pag. 325 ; De Bary, in " Flora,'' 1862, pp. 264 et seqq. 



% " Flora," 1862, p. 303. 



