Badhamia utricularis and Brefeldia maxima. 1 3 
of about half an inch in a minute ; it is often of course slower, 
but in the case just referred to the speed was very much 
greater 1 . 
With regard to the digestion of food-material, there is 
no doubt that it goes on to a large extent in the inner 
and streaming part of the plasmodium ; but that the hyalo- 
plasm has also an absorbing power was beautifully shown 
in the following instance. 
On February 16, 18 86 , 1 was engaged in watching Badhamia - 
plasmodium in a glass box, where it had remained for several 
days in a moist atmosphere, when I noticed on the side a 
dark object, probably a cluster of spores of some fungus, 
from which mycelium was spreading in diverging threads 
(Fig. 17). I saw the plasmodium advance with a clear 
margin of hyaloplasm from the line a in Fig. 17 to the line b } and 
as it encroached upon the hyphae, they instantly melted away 
in its transparent substance like sugar in boiling water. They 
left no trace beyond two small fragments of the cellulose-wall 
(Fig. 18, e) which remained in the hyaline medium and were 
never mixed up with the granular part. In this case the 
stimulus of the food was not powerful enough to occasion an 
opaque concentration of the plasmodium, which spread over 
the clean glass in an almost transparent film (Fig. 17, b ). 
The wave was arrested at the line b in the figure and soon 
retreated. It was then interesting to note the effect produced 
on the parts of the threads which had not been immersed ; 
in the course of half an hour, there was observed a breaking- 
up of the cell-wall with its contents into a string of bead-like 
fragments for a considerable distance from the point reached 
by the plasmodium, and this process continued for some 
hours, until the chain attained the length marked in the 
figure (Fig. 18, c"). 
1 The question of light has nothing to do with the movements of the plasmodium 
of Badhamia ; waves will spread over the sides of a glass box or a glass shade, 
quite indifferently whether in day or night, whether on the part exposed to full 
daylight or that turned to a dark corner. 
