THE MYXOMYCETES OR MYCETOZOA ; ANIMALS OR PLANTS? 105 
duedwith a similar ingestive faculty, Dr. M. C. Cooke practically 
denies. 
To the foregoing heavy bill of indictment it is incumbent upon 
the ^accused to make some brief response. To the one count, that 
of having based his arguments in support of the animal nature 
of the disputed group mainly, if not entirely, on the evidence 
adduced by De Bary and Cienkowski without having then a 
practical knowledge of the organisms or their more recent 
literature, the writer must to some extent plead guilty. Such 
admission must, however, be qualified by the fact of his 
having a short while since made himself familiar with 
both the structure and developmental phenomena of various 
ordinary fungi under able guidance at the South Kensington 
Biological Laboratory, so that he was not altogether meddling 
with an unknown subject in pronouncing an opinion upon 
the claims of the Myxomycetes for association with these 
Cryptogams. Neither respecting more recent literature can 
the writer acknowledge himself to have been entirely in the 
dark. As a subscriber to that work, he possessed, and had re- 
ferred for further information, to Dr. M. C. Cooke’s Handbook to 
British Fungi , Yols. I. and II., published in the year 1871, and 
in which he confidently anticipated finding a masterly, ex- 
cathedra summary of all that was known concerning the struc- 
ture and vital phenomena of the Myxomycetan order, with a 
special reference to the investigations of Continental mycologists. 
The distinguished compiler of the British Handbook had, no 
doubt, worked out the problem for himself, and had important 
affirmative or negative evidence to submit. Alas, for such hopes ! 
Trace of original investigation there was none, while the latest 
literature of the subject with which the editor displayed famili- 
arity was Berkeley’s Outline of an Introduction to Cryptogamic 
Botany , quoted over leaf, and written fourteen years before 
(1857). His diagnoses and more general descriptions of the cha- 
racters of not only the Myxomycetes, but also of the Ilymeno- 
mycetes, Gfasteromycetes, Coniomycetes, and Hyphomycetes, with 
those of their leading secondary subdivisions are admittedly 
copied word for word from that source. The results of the 
writer’s well-intentioned efforts in pursuit of knowledge, so far 
therefore as they related to the Handbook of the British Fungi , 
have to be registered a blank. The serial that enshrines 
Dr. Cooke’s indignant repudiation of the writer’s furtive 
attempts to rob mycologists of one of their most interesting- 
orders kindled hope anew. Though silent as the Sphinx con- 
cerning the titles of the newer important works, that if consulted 
would have convinced the writer of the error of his ways, the 
editor of ‘ Grevillea ’ produces on the cover of his journal a list of 
his voluminous contributions to Cryptogamic literature, including 
