Secoxnp Part. 
MYCETOZOA. 
CHar. VIII. MORPHOLOGY AND COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT. 
Tue name Mycetozoa is here applied to a group of Fungus-like organisms 
amounting at the present time to nearly three hundred species, the larger number of 
which are contained in the division Myxomycetes or Slime-Fungi (the Myxogasteres 
of Fries) together with the smaller one distinguished by Van Tieghem under the name 
of Acrasieae. 
The resemblance of the Mycetozoa to the Fungi is due partly to their mode of 
life and nutrition, partly to the close agreement in structure and biological characters 
between their organs of reproduction and the spores of Fungi. A spore-terminology 
corresponding to that of the Fungi will therefore be applied to the present group. 
With this word of preliminary direction we now proceed to a more particular 
examination of the group. 
MYXOMYCETES. 
Section CXVIII. The ripe spore of the Myxomycetes is round and ellipsoidal 
with the structure of a simple Fungus-spore (see Figs. 182, 183, 193). Anepisporium 
colourless or coloured, smooth or marked by characteristic surface-sculpture and 
varying in thickness in each species, incloses a dense and homogeneous turbid 
protoplasm, which contains one, or sometimes in abnormally large specimens, two 
nuclei in the shape of round transparent bodies with a small central less transparent 
nucleolus. Other bodies of definite shape are sometimes but rarely inclosed in the 
protoplasm ; these have not been very closely examined, but are usually spoken of as 
oil-drops or lumps of mucilage. 
The spores are capable of germination as soon as they are ripe in most of the 
species in which this point has been examined; the moment of maturity will be 
described more exactly in section 120. It is only in the Cribrarieae and Tubulinae 
that all attempts to procure the germination of the spores have hitherto been 
