acteristics of both the groups in question. If on the one hand
the _Myxobacteria_ are certainly schizomycetes, on the other they just
as certainly offer in their developmental history "phenomena closely
resembling those presented by plasmodia or pseudo-plasmodia...." Now the
schizophytes certainly pass by gradations easy to the filamentous algae,
and so to relationship with the plants, and the discovery of the
_Myxobacteriacae_, brings the myxomycetes very near the vegetable
kingdom if not within it.

All authorities agree that the myxomycetes have no connection in the
direction of upward development, "keinen Anschluss nach oben," if then
their only relationship with other organisms is to be found at the
bottom (centre) of the series only, it is purely a matter of
indifference whether we say plant or animal, for at the only point where
there is connection there is no distinction.

But why call them either animals or plants? Was Nature then so poor that
forsooth only two lines of differentiation were at the beginning open
for her effort? May we not rather believe that life's tree may have
risen at first in hundreds of tentative trunks of which two have become
in the progress of the ages so far dominant as to entirely obscure less
progressive types? The Myxomycetes are independent; all that we may
attempt is to assert their near kinship with one or other of life's
great branches.

The cellulose of the slime-mould looks toward the world of plants. The
aerial fructification and stipitate habit of the higher forms tends in
the same direction. The disposition to attach themselves to some fixed
base is a curious characteristic of plants, more pronounced as we ascend
the scale; but by no means lacking in many of the simplest, diatoms,
filamentous algae, etc., and it is quite as reasonable to call a
vorticella, or a stentor, by virtue of his stipitate form and habit, a
plant as to call a slime-mould an animal because in one stage of its
history it resembles an amoeba. The total life of an organism in any
case must be taken into account.[11] At the outset plants and animals
are alike; there is no doubt about it; they differ in the course of
their life-histories. The plasmodium is the vegetative phase of the
slime-mould. It needs no cell-walls of cellulose, no more than do the
dividing cells of a lily-endosperm; both are nourished by organic food
and resort to walls only as conditions change. The possession of walls
is an indic