CH.VIII.—MORPHOLOGY AND COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT.—MYXOMPCETES. 425 
forming somewhat large roundish bodies with a delicate outline in which one or 
more lime granules are imbedded; it is soluble in alcohol at least in Fuligo and 
Didymium Serpula. 
Nuclei were not at first observed in the plasmodia. Cienkowski even stated 
expressly that the nuclei present in the swarm-cells disappear when they coalesce. 
But Schmitz" and Strasburger? have recently established the presence of numerous 
nuclei in the plasmodium, and it may be presumed that they are the persistent nuclei 
ofthe swarm-cells and products of their division. 
Besides the proper constituents of the plasmodium strange bodies of very various 
kinds are often found inside it, such as spores of Fungi and Myxomycetes (see Fig. 183, 
12), parts of plants, &c. These objects are taken up from without into the interior 
of the growing and moving plasmodium, one may say engulfed by it, in a way 
which will be noticed again below, and they may be provisionally termed the sold 
ingesta, 



FIG. 184. Chondrtoderma difforme. Ex- FIG. 185. Didymium leucopus. Portion of the margin of a small reticulated 
ities of b ofa pli dii Magn. pl di “After Ci i from Sachs’ Lehrbuch. Magn. 100 times. 
390 times, 
Reinke has recently published an elaborate investigation of the various substances 
which enter into the composition of the plasmodium of Fuligo*, to which the reader 
is here referred. 
The amoeboid movements of the swarm-cells are continued in the plasmodia. 
They may be seen in larger specimens by continuous observation even with the naked 

1 Sitzgsber. d. Niederrhein. Ges. 4 Aug. 1879. 
2 Zellbildung u. Zelltheilung, 3 Aufl. p. 79. 
3-Studien ii. d.-Protoplasma von J. Reinke u. H. Rodewald in Untersuch. aus d. bot. Laborat. d. 
Univers. Gottingen, II, Berlin, 1881. 
