We have already assumed that fungi are duly and universally admitted, as plants, into the vegetable kingdom. But of this fact some have even ventured to doubt. This doubt, however, has been confined to one order of fungi, except, perhaps, amongst the most illiterate, although now the animal nature of the _Myxogastres_ has scarcely a serious advocate left. In this order the early condition of the plant is pulpy and gelatinous, and consists of a substance more allied to sarcode than cellulose. De Bary insinuated affinities with _Amoeba_,[A] whilst Tulasne affirmed that the outer coat in some of these productions contained so much carbonate of lime that strong effervescence took place on the application of sulphuric acid. Dr. Henry Carter is well known as an old and experienced worker amongst amoeboid forms of animal life, and, when in Bombay, he devoted himself to the examination of the _Myxogastres_ in their early stage, and the result of his examinations has been a firm conviction that there is no relationship whatever between the _Myxogastres_ and the lower forms of animal life. De Bary has himself very much modified, if not wholly abandoned, the views once propounded by him on this subject. When mature, and the dusty spores, mixed with threads, sometimes spiral, are produced, the _Myxogastres_ are so evidently close allies of the _Lycoperdons_, or Puffballs, as to leave no doubt of their affinities. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the presence of zoospores is no proof of animal nature, for not only do they occur in the white rust (_Cystopus_), and in such moulds as _Peronospora_,[B] but are common in algæ, the vegetable nature of which has never been disputed.