770 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
cleavage on the periphery of the sporophore, after they have be¬ 
come erected at right angles to the surface on which they rest, 
at last cut themselves off entirely from the long gelatinous 
stalks by means of which they have crept outward. The lat¬ 
ter phenomenon is quite similar to the formation of the simple 
fructification of Sappinia, a genus of dung-inhabiting amoebae 
(see Olive, 7 02). During the fructifying stage of this organism, 
the amoebae seek drier situations, hence each erects itself at 
right angles to the moist substratum, thus forming a stalked, 
pear-shaped body. In some instances, the stalk, as in Ceratio - 
myxa , is entirely deserted by the protoplasm, which thus 
forms an oval spore on the end of the slender gelatinous sup¬ 
port. 
Other members of the Mycetozoa apparently do not utilize 
slime so extensively or so successfully as does Ceraiiomyxa. In 
the majority of forms with stalked sporangia, the stalks are 
apparently hollow and composed mainly of dried slime. In 
Arcyria , the tubular stalks are filled with rounded, spore-like 
cells (see MacBride, 7 99) ; apparently in this instance some of 
the ascending protoplasm failed to reach the summit before 
the maturity of the sporangium. 
In the higher Myxobacteriaceae, according to Thaxter (’92), 
the stalk of the fructification is likewise a tubular gelatinous 
structure, and the fructifying mass ascends this tube as through 
an open funnel. Besides serving thus as a supporting struc¬ 
ture for the ascent, as well as to bear the final resting bodies, 
the excreted slime is also utilized by the cyst-forming group of 
these organisms as a protecting medium to enclose the mass of 
encysted bacterial rods. 
The sessile fructifications of the simpler members of the 
Acrasieae (Olive, ’02), like the simpler Myxobacteriaceae, em¬ 
ploy slime only as an intrasporal medium for holding in a 
mass the sorus of spores; while in some of the more highly dif¬ 
ferentiated fructifications, it serves in addition as a gelatinous 
stalk to support the globular sorus of spores at its top. Like¬ 
wise in Diplophrys , a member of the Labyrinthuleae, the sorus 
is upheld by a gelatinous stalk. In the higher representatives 
of the Acrasieae, for example in Dictyostelium and Polysphovr 
