and other Mycetozoa . 283 
sporangia, I adopted a method of cultivation recommended 
by Professor Bayley Balfour. Wet blotting-paper was placed 
on a plate and sprinkled over with some seeds of garden 
cress ; with these were sown the spores from a single sporan- 
gium of Chondrioderma difforme collected in a shady wood, 
and the cultivation was covered with a bell-jar. A similar 
preparation was also made with the spores from a sporangium 
taken from a heap of leaves on my premises ; the sporangia 
of both cultivations (which I will call respectively A and B), 
showed well-developed capillitium, but the former was of 
a bolder and darker type than the latter. 
In the course of twelve days several small yellow plasmodia 
with diverging veins were observed on the blotting-paper 
sown with the spores of sporangium A, and on the following 
day one of these had contracted into an orange-coloured 
hemisphere about 1 m.m. in diameter, which became dark 
purplish brown in the course of the day ; next morning it was 
grey, changing to the usual chalk-white when dry. On 
examination, the spores were found perfectly mature and 
normal ; the capillitium, though less abundant than in the 
parent, was fairly pronounced, and the thickened margin of the 
base of the sporangium was of the same dark orange colour as 
in the original gathering. 
In the meantime fresh sporangia were rapidly appearing, 
and in three weeks from the date of sowing, two hundred and 
fifty sporangia were counted on the roots and stems of the 
cress and on the blotting-paper. 
A small plasmodium from this cultivation was carefully 
lifted, together with a few fibres of the blotting-paper, and 
placed on a glass slide for examination under the microscope. 
The rhythmic streaming was clearly observed, and it was 
evident that the yellow colour was due to the minute proto- 
plasmic granules and not to foreign matter in suspension ; 
it was afterwards placed under a wine-glass, where it formed 
into a sporangium in a few hours. 
Under the bell-jar, covering the spores from cultivation 
B, sporangia made their appearance in twelve days, and 
