112 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
determining the ingestive faculties of ordinary Infusoria, was 
speedily followed by its free inception by both the natatory mo- 
nads and the repent amoebiform units, neither possessing a distinct 
mouth, but the former taking in the particles chiefly towards the 
anterior region of the bod}q and the latter indifferently at any 
point of the periphery. As in the case of Bacteria , the smaller 
particles of pigmentary matter, after inception, were usually 
collected together within spheroidal vacuoles of the endoplasmic 
region, and maintained therein the same molecular movements 
they exhibited in their free condition. The larger particles, 
on the other hand, remained distributed as more or less distinctly 
isolated fragments. F or the next few days, and indeed up to the 
time of going to press with this article — ten days or a fortnight 
after their exclusion from the spores — these amoeboid organisms 
have continued to feed and increase in size, many of them 
measuring twice their original dimensions, and may be said to 
be fairly started on their way towards the succeeding chapter in 
their ontogeny, viz. their production through coalescence of the 
comparatively colossal but still amoebiform * plasmodia/ out of 
which the spore-receptacles or sporangia are finally evolved. 
The points now verified, through personal investigation, 
concerning the development and nutritive phenomena of the 
Myxomycetes are herewith accepted by the writer as affording 
the strongest confirmation of his views previously expressed, 
to the effect that these organisms have nothing whatever to do 
with Fungi, but are rightly referable to the Protozoic division 
of the animal series. Among these their correlation may be 
accomplished with the utmost ease, their entire life- cycle, 
indeed, being precisely parallel in kind, though differing in 
degree, with what obtains among the ordinary Flagellate 
Infusoria. A primary flagelliferous phase, an intermediate 
repent amoeboid condition, and a final encysted sporiferous 
state, these three, represent the normal life-cycle of a monadi- 
form animalcule. § 
The only essential distinction manifested on the part of 
the Myxomycetes and which, as just stated, is only one j 
of degree and not of kind, consists in the fact that the final 
act, that of encj^stment, and the resolution of the body into | 
spores, is in this group accomplished by a mass of coalescing 
or conjugating units, which consequently produce a rela- I 
tively colossal spore-receptacle or sporangium. — the so-called 
Fungus — while in the case of the typical Flagellata it is an | 
isolated monad, or two or a few conjugated units only, that build j 
up the relatively minute, but otherwise morphologically and 
physiologically identical reproductive structure. While thus 
the life-cycle of an ordinary Monad may be declared to be an 
abbreviated epitomization only of what, when reduced to its 
