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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
one bearing tbe title of ‘ tbe Myxomycetes of Great Britain. 
London, 1877/ Here, at length, was a ‘ Daniel come to judg- 
ment ; ’ here, doubtless, were to be found revealed developmental 
facts and features undreamt of in tbe philosophy of De Bary 
and Cienkowski, and by which the writer was to find that the 
views he advocated respecting the animal nature of these 
organisms were utterly demolished. The book in question, how- 
ever, as advertised in ‘ Grevillea,’ hardly fulfils the promise of its 
title. In place of an original treatise, representing the outcome of 
many years’ original research on the part of Dr. Cooke, it proved 
to be a mutilated transcript only of a ‘ monograph of the 
Mycetozoa,’ published by Bostafinski, in Polish, in the year 
1875. As the author naively admits on the title-page, ‘the 
characters of all the orders, families, and genera, with descrip- 
tions of the British species and original analytical tables,’ are 
reproduced word for word from the Continental work ; and 
since ‘ the Myxomycetes of Great Britain ’ consists exclusively of 
these translated characters, with two or three pages of editorial 
introduction, its claim to recognition as an independent treatise 
as announced in ‘ Grevillea,’ is somewhat doubtful. As a trans- 
lation, limited only to the diagnoses of the British representa- 
tives of the group, it furthermore does but imperfect justice to 
the more comprehensive system embodied in Bostafinski’s 
Monograph ; and it is therefore satisfactory to know that a 
complete translation of this work from the Polish into the Ger- 
man language is shortly announced. 
Thus much for the external features of the ‘ Myxomycetes 
of Great Britain,’ but what of the internal ones ? Instead of 
producing, as the writer anticipated, a complete refutation of 
De Bary’s and Cienkowski’s observations, Bostafinski not 
only embodies in his diagnosis of the group the characters 
of the several developmental stages made known by these two 
authorities, but also in many instances reproduces their figures 
in conjunction with his own, and even adopts De Bary’s 
title, ‘ Mycetozoa,’ in preference to that of Myxomycetes, 
for the distinction of the group. It needs indeed but to re- 
produce Dr. Cooke’s translation of Bostafinski’s diagnosis of 
the order, as given below, to demonstrate this point : — 
1 Mycetozoa. De Bary, 1861 ; Bostafinski, 1875. 
1 When young, naked, mobile, in consequence of which the masses of 
plasmodium have a changing form. These masses at the time of fructifica- 
tion, sometimes dividing themselves into single parts, are transformed into 
motionless fruits. Fruit either irregular in form ( plasmodiocarp ) or regular 
( sporangium ). Sporangia, through fusion and union, produce, now and 
then, compound fruits ( JEthalium ). iEthalium usually of considerable 
dimensions, of regular or irregular form, naked, or covered with a common 
