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PHARMACEUTICAL BOTANY 
SUBDIVISION II.—MYXOMYCETES, OR SLIME MOLDS 
Terrestrial or aquatic organisms, frequently classified as belonging 
to the animal kingdom and found commonly on decaying wood, 
leaves, or humous soil in forests. Their vegetative body consists 
of a naked, multinucleated mass of protoplasm called the plasmo- 
dium, which has a creeping and rolling amoeboid motion, putting out 
and retracting regions of its body called pseudopodia. The size of 
the plasmodium varies from a ten-cent piece to several square feet 
of surface. It is net-like, the net being of irregular dimensions. 
Like the amoeba the outer portion of the plasmodium is clear and 
Pig. hi. — A, B, Comatricha nigra. A, Sporangium, natural size; B, capilli- 
tium, 20/1; C, E, Stemonitis fusca; C, sporangium, natural size; D and E, capilli- 
tia, s/i, 20/1; F, H, Enerthema papillatum , F, unripe; G, mature sporangium, 
io/i: H, capillitium, 20/1. (C, D, after nature. A, F, G, H, after Rostajinski; 
B, E, after de Bary in Die natiirlichen PJlanzenfamilien I. 1, p. 26.) 
watery and known as the ectoplasm , the inner portion is granular 
and called the endoplasm. Like the amoeba and unlike other plants, 
this slimy body engulfs solid food by means of its pseudopodia in¬ 
stead of admitting it in solution. It is extremely sensitive to light 
being negatively heliotropic, i.e., turning away from the sun’s rays. 
At the time of reproduction, the plasmodium creeps to the surface. 
The whole plasmodium then forms one or more fructifications. 
These fructifications vary from cushion-like masses (cethallia) 
