816 THE FUNGOID ORIGIN OF DISEASE, ETC. 
vegetable protoplasm into amoeboid animalcules. It was only 
after stud} T ing the mycelizoa fungi that I began to see the un- 
limitable extent to which such beings commencing their ex- 
istence and even feeding themselves up to maturity, might 
enter into, and develop themselves upon the remains of their 
dead or dying host. 
44 The contents of the root-like extremities, filamentous 
mycelium, and pin-head-like capsules of the Mucoridece may 
issue, when their cellulose covering is ruptured, in the form 
of amoeboid cells (that is, of course, as regards the sporidia 
before they are capsuled), and so creep away. Then the 
Mucoridce are closely allied to the Myxogostres or Mycetozoa ; 
and here no doubt the protoplasm of the Mucor-eeM or fila- 
ment, &c., issues in amoeboid forms from its cellulose invest- 
ment, which seems to be, as in many other instances, secreted 
by, and common to, a congeries of amoeboid bodies, thus 
assuming the specific form of Mucor. 
44 But there is no 4 transformation 5 here of the protoplasm, 
no perishing. The amoeboid cells come forth at once and do 
not bore holes through the cell- wall as the Mycetozoa family 
when developed in the vegetable cell. 
44 Hence, unless the protoplasm issues at once in an amoe- 
boid form, or forms, as a whole, as from the cell of (Edogo - 
nium , &c., or in plurality, as from the filaments and pin-head- 
like capsule of unmatured sporidia in Mucor , ike., I should still 
be inclined to view the product as not of the same, but of a 
different organism. 
14 No doubt you saw the statement I last made of the pro- 
bable reproductive process by impregnation in the Rhizopoda 
in the fifteenth vol. of the 4 Annals, 5 p. 172. 
44 1 found in a pair of Difflugia urceolata (Cartar) in zygosis, 
when crushed under the microscope, a number of monad-like 
monociliated, polymorphic bodies in active movement ; the 
usual nucleated cells much larger ; and apparently some of 
the latter which had become polymorphic or amoebiform. 
44 The origin of the nucleated cells I had not been able to 
ascertain — that is, from what part of the Difflugia they come. 
That of the monad-like bodies I knew to have come from the 
nucleus, which frequently (under reproductive circumstances?) 
breaks up into these bodies, and therefore, in this case, was 
not present — had thus disappeared ; while the amoeboid 
bodies without cilium seemed to be but a more advanced state 
of the passive nucleated or ovi-like cells. 
44 Thus I inferred that the small monociliated bodies 
coming from the nucleus were the male elements, and the 
larger nucleated cells the female elements, which, meeting 
