97 
THE MYXOMYCETES OR MYCETOZOA; ANIMALS 
OR PLANTS? 
By W. SAYILLE KENT, F.L.S., F.Z.S., F.R.M.S. 
[Plates III. and IV.] 
A LONG- the lower confines of the organic world diverse 
group-forms are to be encountered, of which it is hard 
to predicate whether they rightly appertain to the animal or 
to the vegetable series. Prior to that deeper insight into the 
mysteries of Nature that, thanks chiefly to the improvements, 
made in the compound microscope, has fallen to the lot of the 
present generation, organisms of even large appreciable dimen- 
sions — such as Sponges, Corals, and Zoophytes — furnished sub- 
jects of contention between Zoologists and Botanists. Before 
the rapid advance of modern science, however, the lists for 
controversy have been gradually growing more and more con- 
fined, further progress at the same ratio threatening ere long 
to place the biologist in the position of the classic hero, who 
wept for the want of other worlds to conquer. Already, the 
cordon drawn around the once extensive tourney-ground includes 
only the lower groups pertaining to Cryptogamic Botany and 
to that subdivision of the animal kingdom most usually defined 
by the title of the Protozoa, but which might, with equal con- 
sistency, be designated the department of Cryptogamic Zoology. 
All of. these agree with one another, and at the same time 
differ from the more highly organized groups of Phanerogamic 
plants and Metazoic animals respectively in the obscure and 
comparatively rudimentary character of their reproductive phe- 
nomena. 
In recognition of the extreme difficulty that attends the pre- 
cise definition of an arbitrary boundary line that shall, to the 
satisfaction of both Botanists and Zoologists, separate the sub- 
jects of their respective studies, Biologists have from time to 
NEW SERIES, VOL. V. NO. XVIII. H 
