452 SECOND PART.—MYCETOZOA. 
they live on dead organic and especially vegetable substances, of course with the 
necessary ash-constituents, and are found therefore chiefly in accumulations of 
dead parts of plants—leaves, tan, rotten wood, and the like. What definite chemical 
substance does actually and usually serve or is fitted to serve as nutrient material 
to the Myxomycetes is a question which has not yet been thoroughly examined. 
The facts recorded above show that the food is taken in during the swarm-cell 
condition only in the fluid state or state of solution, and this is also the case, at least in 
most instances, with the plasmodia. That it is so. appears, to say the least, extremely 
probable by the behaviour of the plasmodia of Fuligo to’ the extract of tan, as shown 
by Stahl’s experiments quoted above. This agrees with the observation that 
plasmodia of Chondrioderma difforme may be obtained’ from spores in watery 
infusions of vegetable substances though no solid bodies are supplied to them, and 
lastly with the fact that solid ingesta have never béen found in the plasmodia of 
certain species, as Lycogala, though it must be allowed that these have not been very 
thoroughly examined. ; 
On the other hand we see solid bodies taken up by the plasmodia which have 
been more particularly described above, among others by Chondrioderma, and some 
of them at least again thrown out. The body taken into the plasmodium is often more 
or less perfectly dissolved. It has already been stated that the sclerotium-cells 
of a species engulphed by its own plasmodium gradually disappear and pass into 
the substance of the plasmodium, but it is uncertain whether this is a case of actual 
dissolution of the body introduced, or of a coalescence with the body which absorbs 
it, like that of the swarm-cells or the branches of the plasmodium. In the plasmodium 
of Didymium Serpula which were fed with carmine, the fragments of carmine were to 
some extent at least dissolved ; they were repeatedly carried along in the stream of 
granules, and in twenty-four hours’ time were enclosed each in a vacuole filled with a 
clear red solution. This continued for several days. On the other hand the 
Chondrioderma mentioned above showed no signs of dissolving the few fragments of 
carmine which it received into its substance. In experiments instituted’ by Dr. 
Wortmann a number of starch-grains were taken in by plasmodia of Fuligo, and they 
showed deep corrosions in the course of from two to three days. This shows 
the presence of a ferment capable of dissolving starch and confirms Kühne’s previous 
determination. A ferment which acts upon cellulose must be present, at least during 
the passage of the sclerotia of Fuligo into the motile condition, because the cellulose 
membranes are rapidly dissolved during that time. Krukenberg has ascertained the 
presence of a peptonising ferment’. 
These facts all point to the conclusion that the solid ingesta are to some extent 
at least appropriated as food and digested, the undigested remainder being then cast 
out. We have no exact physiological investigations of these questions and of others 
which are connected with them. So far as plasmodia devour and digest living bodies, 
the name of saprophytes can only be applied to them with some modification of its 
ordinary mean. 
Some of the forms which were classed above as doubtful Myxomycetes, Bursulla 
for example, are saprophytes in their mode of life. The account given above ‘of 

: ? Unters. d. physiol. Instit. z. Heidelberg, II, p. 273. See also Reinke cited on p. 52. 
