104 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Protozoa, and also with the hybemating encystments or so-called 
‘gemmules,’ or ‘statoblasts’ of Spongilla, and other Sponge types. 
Further affinities with the Sponges — these organisms being 
accepted as Flagellate Protozoa — were held to be manifested 
in connexion with the fine net-work of anastomosing fibres or 
‘ capillitium/ singularly resembling the horny rete of the kera- 
tose Sponges, which is usually developed within the sporangia 
of the Myxomycetes, and to which are frequently added crystalline 
or nodular deposits of lime that may be consistently compared 
with the calcareous or siliceous, spiculiferous elements of ordinary 
Sponge forms. 
While it was expected that mycologists, pure and simple, 
would be somewhat loth to relinquish the interesting little 
group of Myxomycetes into the hands of the zoologists, it was 
anticipated that the protest against their advocated transfer 
would have been raised upon a more substantial basis than that 
lodged by Dr. M. C. Cooke in his Journal of Cryptogamic Botany, 
‘ Grevillea/ for December last. Instead of applying himself to a 
concise and lucid exposition of those points, which, to his mind, 
establish, as he expresses it, the ‘ truly vegetable nature ’ of the 
Myxomycetes, Dr. Cooke confines his criticism of the views 
advocated by the writer to an unsupported contradiction of the 
facts accepted as indicative of their animal affinities, accom- 
panied by what must be objected to as a direct misrepresenta- 
tion of the arguments used in the practical application of these 
facts to the question raised. In the first place, it is affirmed 
that De Bary has entirely abandoned his former views respect- 
ing the animal affinities of the Myxomycetes. Can Dr. Cooke 
quote any work or paper in which a renunciation of the facts 
and opinions expressed in his treatise, Die Mycetozoen , published 
in the year 1864, is recorded ? This record again being, not as 
his critic ingeniously affirms, written ‘ in a hurry and repented at 
leisure/ but representing the result of many years’ careful investi- 
gation, backed by the confirmation of all essential facts at the 
hands of an independent authority. The editor of ‘Grevillea’ next 
politely suggests that, in attempting to correlate the Myxomycetes 
with the Protozoa, the present writer has ‘ gone out of the way to 
meddle with a subject that he does not understand,’ that he has no 
practical acquaintance with the organisms of which he treats, 
and no knowledge of the later important Polish and other works 
upon the Myxomycetes, which do not support their animal 
affinities. Finally, Mr. Saville Kent is accredited with an at- 
tempt ‘ to squeeze the Myxomycetes into the animal kingdom by 
stealth ; ’ and to have done this in defiance of axioms he has 
elsewhere adopted, for the distinction of the ordinary infusorial 
t\ r pes from lower plants, including, more particularly, their 
capacity to ingest solid food. That the Myxomycetes are en- 
