CHAPTER II 



SLIME MOULDS (MYXOMYCETES) 



CLASS I. MYXOMYCETES 



Considerable attention has been given in recent years to the slime 

 moulds on account of their biologic interest, taxonomic relationship 

 and disease-producing forms. As organisms, they have been bandied 

 about. They have been claimed by zoologists and botanists alike, 

 for in certain stages of their life cycle they strongly suggest the protozoa, 

 such as the amoeba. Perhaps on account of this uncertainty one would 

 be justified in placing the slime moulds in the class Protista of Haeckel, 

 which group was intended to include all such primitive organisms 

 which naturalists have been unable to put satisfactorily either in the 

 animal, or the vegetable kingdoms, but which partake of the nature of 

 both the animal and the plant phylae. Hence we would have as a 

 tentative arrangement 



Protista 

 \ 

 \ 

 Protozoa Peotophyta 



where the Protista represent the primitive stock of organisms which 

 have given rise to simple animals on the one hand, or primitive plants 

 on the other. 



Fries and some of his predecessors considered that the slime moulds 

 were puffballs (Gasteromycetes) and the expression of this view is 

 suggested in the name Myxogastres given them by Fries in 1833. 

 Wallroth in 1836 viewing them as related to the fungi termed them 

 MYXOMYCETES. De Bary, the German botanist, in 1858, impressed 

 by their closer relationship with the animal world, called them Myce- 

 TOZOA. Zopf in 1885 describes them as Die Pilzthiere and Rostafinski, 

 a pupil of De Bary, working under his supervision in an elaboration 

 of a monograph of these organisms, calls them Mycetozoa. We, there- 

 fore, are limited by strict priority to adopt the name Myxogastres 

 for them; but there are valid reasons why the name Myxomycetes 



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