FUNGI. 353 



butions, and bacteriology is bailed tbe latest pbase of biologic 

 science. Nevertheless, the subject is as yet only touched upon. 

 We have simply begun to find out how to study these minutest 

 forms, some of which may yet be hiding beyond our utmost micro- 

 scopic vision. 



But the most remarkable group of fungoid organisms remains 

 yet to be considered — remarkable alike because of the innate nov- 

 elty and beauty of the objects themselves, and because of the diffi- 

 culty which seems ever likely to attend any effort to fix exactly 

 their place in classification. Among English writers the organ- 

 isms in question are called slime-molds ; in science they have re- 

 ceived as a group different appellations. The slime-molds are 

 sufficiently common in all 

 the wooded regions of the 

 globe, although receiving 

 less attention on account 

 of minuteness and unob- 

 trusiveness. With most of 

 the species it is a plain case 

 of "seek and thou shalt 

 find." Some, however, are 

 quite large, as, for instance, 

 one of the simplest appear- 

 ing often in summer flow- 

 ing up between the planks 

 of our familiar board 

 walks, for be it under- 



' Fig. 1. — Fruit or Lilac Blight, x 300. 



stood at the outset that 



the slime -molds are, in one stage at least, soft, protoplasmic 

 bodies possessed of locomotive powers, changing form with pro- 

 tean incertitude, and position with nonchalance far from reas- 

 suring. The species in question appears then, in quantity, a 

 patch of brownish, frothy-looking matter, not attractive. Scrape 

 it away, and probably more will take its place, furnished forth 

 from the moist, dark chambers underneath. Leave it a few hours, 

 and you return to find a mass of purplish dust, overarched, per- 

 chance, by a porous crust of yellowish color and fragile struct- 

 ure. This dust is fruit, spores we may say, and we wonder 

 what may be the destiny of spores formed in so strange a fash- 

 ion. Place a few of these spores in a moist chamber, and in a 

 short time each germinates and produces — a mycelial thread ? 

 Not at all ; on the contrary, a protoplasmic particle, not to be dis- 

 tinguished from that other protoplasmic bit men call Amoeba. 

 When these Amcebse, produced by the germinating spores, have 

 for a time pursued each his individual way, all under favoring 

 circumstances reassemble, coalesce, actually blending, in most 



vol. xxxv. — 23 



