NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 91 



Ocean, twenty-one in the Gulf of Mexico, seven in the Caribbean 

 Sea, one in the South Pacific, and five in the North Pacific. The 

 depths at these stations vary from 7 to 2512 fathoms. The classi- 

 fication followed is that of Mr. Brady in the ' Challenger ' reports. 



Zoologists seem sometimes to forget these primitive forms of 

 animal life, and yet how little we know of their life-histories! 

 "How the function of nutrition is accomplished, and the nature 

 and condition of the organic material used as food by these 

 minute animals is not yet determined." " Of the process of 

 reproduction little is known beyond the fact of multiplication by 

 gemmation and fission." The Foraminifera are therefore still in 

 search of their interpreter. Their iconograpber has not been 

 undiscoverable. This most interesting memoir is illustrated by 

 no fewer than eighty beautiful plates. 



Most English readers will remember these animals as having 

 formed the pabulum of Huxley's classical lecture " On a Piece of 

 Chalk." 



The Mycetozoa, and some Questions tohich they Suggest. By the 

 Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry, D.C.L., &c. and Agnes 

 Fry. ' Knowledge' Office. 



This is a reprint from the columns of our contemporary 

 1 Knowledge,' and is devoted to the consideration of a form of 

 life whose position in classification is still sub judice, being 

 claimed alike by botanists and zoologists. We recently (' Zoolo- 

 gist,* 1899, p. 524) drew attention to a volume on the same 

 subject by Prof. Macbride. It is owing to these diverse claims 

 that the subject becomes matter for our pages. The present 

 authors, in discussing the affinities of the Mycetozoa = Myxo- 

 mycetes of Macbride, and the question as to whether they 

 belong to the vegetable or animal domains — which, after all, 

 reduced to their primitive conditions, are practically convertible 

 terms— pronounce a qualified decision. "It almost seems as if 

 the Myxies were a vagrant tribe that wander sometimes on the 

 one side, and sometimes on the other side of the border-line — 

 like nomads wandering across the frontier of two settled and 

 adjoining states, to neither of which they belong. They would 

 seem to begin life as animals, and end it as vegetables." 



