302 
F. Cavers. 
THE INTER-RELATIONSHIPS OP PROTISTA AND 
PRIMITIVE FUNGI. 
By P. Cavers. 
(Continued from p. 280). 
Another line leading from the lower Olpidiaceae has probably 
given rise to certain forms which may be included in Schroter’s 
family Synchytriaceae; this is distinguished from the Olpidiaceae 
by the fact that the body divides up to form a sorus of zoosporangia, 
instead of a single sporangium. As understood here the family 
includes six genera— Sorolpidium, Anisomyxa, Rhizomyxa, Rozella, 
Woronina, Woroninella and Synchytrium. In Sorolpidium (Fig. 6, F) 
the amoeboid vegetative stage is succeeded by the reproductive 
phase in which the parasite divides into a number of uninucleate 
amoebae ; these form the spore mother-cells, contained within an 
enclosing membrane, and after a resting period each nucleus under¬ 
goes two mitoses, thus giving rise to four zoospores; Nemec also 
describes zoosporangia of varying sizes which gave rise directly to 
zoospores instead of to spore-clusters, and also thick-walled cysts, 
but the connexion of these with the life cycle of Sorolpidium could 
not be determined with certainty. In another new genus described 
by Nemec (1913), Anisomyxa , the vegetative body resembles that 
of Sorolpidium in being at first uninucleate but later growing so as 
to fill the host-cell and becoming multinucleate, but here two kinds 
of sori were found, apparently differing only in the size of the 
constituent sporangia, the latter being in both cases uninucleate at 
first and later multinucleate and the zoospores being similar in form. 
In neither genus was a sexual process observed. In Rhizomyxa, 
a genus described by Borzi in 1884 and placed by Schroter in 
the Ancylistineae but probably better classed with Synchytriaceae, 
the amoeboid body is evidently similar to that of the genera just 
mentioned,''and after becoming clad with a membrane it divides up 
into portions each of which may either become at once a single 
zoospore or may divide further so as to produce numerous zoospores 
—that is, we may either say that the amoeboid parasite produces 
alternatively zoosporangia and sori, or that both kinds are sori but 
in the former kind the sporangium produces a single spore. Borzi 
also described in Rhizomyxa thick-wailed resting sporangia, which 
also were formed either singly or as a sorus, and sexual organs like 
those described for Olpidiopsis, the body dividing into a club-like 
antheridium and spherical oogonium and the former emptying its 
contents into the latter by means of a short tube. However, 
nothing is known of the cytology of Rhizomyxa , and it remains to 
be demonstrated that the sexual organs described by Borzi really 
belong to this organism and not to an Olpidiopsis or some other 
genus. > Rozella and Woronina were both described by Cornu and 
do not appear to have been reinvestigated more recently; in both, 
the zoospores are biciliate and the sori are loosely arranged from 
the beginning, that is, the parasite breaks up into completely 
separate portions not enclosed within a common membrane, each 
portion developing into a sporangium; Rozella apparently differs 
from Woronina only in having the sporangia of a sorus arranged 
in a row instead of a compact cluster. Other imperfectly known 
formsare Woroninella (Raciborski, 1898) and Micromyces (Dangeard, 
1888); the former has polyhedral thick-coated sori and may be said 
to differ from Woronina mainly by its adaptation to land life and 
