THE MYXOMYCETES OR MYCETOZOA ; ANIMALS OR PLANTS? 107 
coat (cortex). Spores produced within the fruit through free-cell formation, 
or on the surface through division. The contents of the spores at the time of 
germination give rise to either at first a naked zoospore provided with a 
nucleus, a cramped (contractile) vacuole, and long cilia, or to an amoeboid. 
These zoospores, or amoebae, floating together in masses, give rise to mobile 
plasmodia.’ — Rstfki. Mon., p. 83. 
The points conceded in the foregoing diagnosis, viz., the 
derivation of the sporangia from mobile plasmodia, which are 
themselves built up through the coalescence of a greater or 
less number of spore-derived amoeboid or flagelliferous units, 
which are provided with contractile vesicles, and, it should be 
added, the faculty of ingesting solid food, furnish all that 
the writer requires for the establishment of their animal nature 
and affinities. Rostafinski’s systematic monograph, at the same 
time, deals almost exclusively with the histology and specific 
distinctions of the sporangia and their contained elements, no 
data or drawings of their developmental phases being included, 
beyond such as are evidently derived second-hand from De 
Bary and Cienkowski. The editor of ‘ Grevillea ’ ignoring the 
facts adduced by these authorities, denies that the Myxo- 
mycetes subsist on solid food matter, and has possibly a 
revelation of his own to disclose. Can it be that he gives 
adhesion to a novel interpretation of the development of the 
group placed on record by a Mr. George Massie in the pages 
of Science Gossip for January 1881, and in which the Myce- 
tozoon Spumaria alba is represented as producing spores, which 
give rise to jointed hyphae, after the manner of the typical 
Fungi? A submission of the drawings of these germinating 
spores to a mycological expert, resulted, as was anticipated, in 
the verdict that they had nothing whatever to do with the species 
to which they were accredited, but represented the adventitious 
spores of a species of Penicillium , most probably P. crustaceum. 
Mr. Massie treats the account given by De Bary and Cienkowski 
of the spores giving exit to motile monadiform or amoeba-like 
germs as an idle tale, unsupported by correlation with any 
recognized specific form, and which must vanish into thin air 
before the weighty proofs adduced through his own original 
investigation of Spumaria alba. The spores of Fuligo varians 
(JEthalmm septicum) are also referred to by this writer as giving 
origin to branching threads, though, unfortunately, the further 
development of it ‘ was not observed/ Other nameless species 
are likewise reported by Mr. Massie to have exhibited a similar 
plan of germination, while not in a single instance out of a 
number of types experimented upon were mobile cells observed 
to originate directly from a spore. 
That Mr. Massie is totally unacquainted with the original 
records of De Bary and Cienkowski is evident from the fact, 
