Dr. Schroeter, a recent writer on the subject, after showing the probable connection between the phycochromaceous Algae and the simplest colorless forms, namely, the _Schizomycetes_, goes on to remark: "At the same point where the Schizomycetous series take rise, there begin certain other lines of development among the most diminutive protoplasmic masses.... Through the amoebae one of these lines gives rise on the one hand to rhizopods and sponges in the animal kingdom, on the other to the _Myxomycetes_ among the fungi." This ranges the Myxomycetes, in origin at least, near the _Schizomycetes_. The brilliant studies of Dr. Thaxter, resulting in the discovery and recognition of a new group, a new order of the schizomycetes, strikingly confirm the judgment of Schroeter.[10] Here we have forms that strangely unite characteristics 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.