Nevertheless the spores of many species germinate quickly simply in water, and a drop suspended in the form of the ordinary drop-culture on a cover-glass affords ample opportunity. In the course of time, usually not more than two or three days, the swarm spores cease their activity, lose their cilia, and come to rest, exhibiting at most nothing more than the slow amoeboid movement already referred to. In the course of two or three days more, in favorable cases, the little spores begin to assemble and flow together; at first into small aggregations, then larger, until at length all have blended in one creeping protoplasmic mass to form thus once again the plasmodium, or plasmodial phase with which the round began. Small plasmodia may generally be thus obtained artificially from drop-cultures. Such, however, in the experience of the writer, are with difficulty kept alive. Hay infusions, infusions of rotten wood, etc., may sometimes for a time give excellent results. The spores of _Didymium crustaceum_ were sown upon a heap of leaves in autumn. An abundant display of the same species followed in the next June; but, of course, the intervening phases were not observed. The most satisfactory studies are obtained by plasmodia carefully brought in directly from the field. A plasmodium that appeared suddenly and passed to fruit on agar in a petri dish offers a valuable suggestion for further research. With such a life-history as that thus briefly sketched, it is small wonder that the taxonomic place of the slime-moulds is a matter of uncertainty, not to say perplexity. So long as men studied the ripened fruit, the sporangia and the spores, with the marvellous capillitium, there seemed little difficulty; the myxomycetes were fungi, related to the puff-balls, and in fact to be classed in the same natural order. The synonymy of some of the more noticeable species affords a very interesting epitome of the history of scientific thought in this particular field of investigation. Thus the first described slime-mould identifiable by its description is Lycogala epidendrum (Buxbaum) Fries, the most puff-ball looking of the whole series. Ray, in 1690, called this _Fungus coccineus_. In 1718, Ruppinus described the same thing as _Lycoperdon sanguineum_; Dillenius at about the same time, as _Bovista miniata_; and it was not until 1729, that Micheli so far appreciated the structure of the little puff-ball as to give it a definite, independent, generic place and title, _Lycogala globosum_ ..., etc.[8]