But Micheli's light was too strong for his generation. As Fries, one hundred years later quaintly says, ... "immortalis Micheli tam claram lucem accendit ut succesores proximi eam ne ferre quidem potuerint." Notwithstanding Micheli's clear distinctions, he was entirely disregarded, and our little Lycogala was dubbed _Lycoperdon_ and _Mucor_ down to the end of the century; and so it was not till 1790 that Persoon comes around to the standpoint of Micheli and writes _Lycogala miniata_. Fries himself, reviewing the labors of his predecessors all, grouped the slime-moulds as a sub-order of the gasteromycetes and gave expression to his view of their nature and position when he named the sub-order _Myxogastres_. In 1833, Link, having more prominently in mind the minuteness of most of the species collocated by Fries, and perceiving perhaps more clearly even than the great mycologist the entire independence of the group, suggested as a substitute for the sub-order _Myxogastres_, the order _Myxomycetes, slime-moulds_. Link's decision passed unchallenged for nearly thirty years. The slime-moulds were set apart by themselves; they were fungi without question and, of course, plants. If the hypha is the morphological test of a fungus, then it is plain that the slime-moulds are not fungi. No myxomycete has hyphae, nor indeed anything at all of the kind. Nevertheless, there are certain parasitic fungi, _Chytridiaceae_ for example, whose relationships plainly entitle them to a place among the hyphate forms that have no hyphae whatever in the entire round of their life-history. These are, however, exceptional cases and really do not bear very closely on the question at issue. Physiologically, the fungi are incapable of independent existence, being destitute of chlorophyl. In this respect the slime-moulds are like the fungi; they are nearly all saprophytes and absolutely destitute of chlorophyl. Unfortunately this physiological character is identically that one which the fungi share with the whole animal world, so that the startling inquiry instantly rises, are the slime-moulds plants at all? Are they not animals? Do not their amoeboid spores and plasmodia ally them at once to the amoeba and his congeners, to all the monad, rhizopodal world? This is the position suggested by DeBary in 1858, and adopted since by many distinguished authorities, among whom may be mentioned Saville Kent, of England, and Dr. William Zopf, of Germany, in _Die Pilzthiere_, 1885. Rostafinski was a pupil of DeBary's. However, his volume on the slime-moulds was written after leaving the laboratory; and no doubt with the suggestion of his master still before his mind, he adopts the title Mycetozoa, as indicating a closer relationship with the animal world, but our leading authority really has little to say in regard to the matter.[9]