Under certain conditions, low temperature, lack of moisture, the plasmodium may pass into a resting phase, when it masses itself in heaps and may become quite dry in lumps of considerable size, and so await the return of favorable conditions when former activity is quickly resumed. Sometimes the larger plasmodia pass into the resting phase by undergoing a very peculiar change of structure. In ordinary circumstances the abundant free nuclei demonstrable in the plasmodium afford the only evidence of cellular organization. In passing now into the condition of rest, the whole protoplasmic mass separates simultaneously into numerous definite polyhedral or parenchymatous cells, each with a well-developed _cellulose wall_.[4] When the conditions essential to activity are restored, the walls disappear, the cellulose is resorbed, and the plasmodium resumes its usual habit and structure.
The plasmodial phase of the slime-mould, like the hyphal phase of the fungus, may continue a long time; for months, possibly for years. The reason for making the latter statement will presently appear. But however long or short the plasmodial phase continue, the time of fruit, the reproductive phase, at length arrives. When this time comes, induced partly by a certain maturity in the organism itself, partly no doubt by the trend of external conditions, the plasmodium no longer as before evades the light, but pushes to the surface, and appears usually in some elevated or exposed position, the upper side of the log, the top of the stump, the upper surface of its habitat, whatever that may be; or even leaves its nutrient base entirely and finds lodging on some neighboring object. In such emergency the stems and leaves of flowering plants are often made to serve, and even fruits and flowers afford convenient resting places. The object now to be attained is not the formation of fruit alone, but likewise its speedy desiccation and the prompt dispersal of the perfected spores. Nothing can be more interesting than to watch the slime-mould as its plasmodium accomplishes this its last migration. If hitherto its habitat has been the soft interior of a rotten log, it now begins to ooze out in all directions, to well up through the crevices of the bark as if pushed by some energy acting in the rear, to stream down upon the ground, to flow in a hundred tiny streams over all the region round about, to climb all stems, ascend all branches, to the height of many inches, all to pass suddenly as if by magic charm into one widespread, dusty field of flying spores. Or, to be more exact, whatever the position ultimately assumed, the plasmodium soon becomes quiescent, takes on definite and ultimate shape, which varies greatly, almost for each species. Thus it may simply form a flat, cake-like mass, _aethalium_, internally divided into an indefinite number of ill-defined spore cases, sporangia; or the plasmodium may take the form of a simple net, _plasmodiocarp_, whose cords stand out like swollen veins, whose meshes vary both in form and size; or more commonly the whole protoplasmic mass breaks up into little spheroidal heaps which may be sessile directly on the substratum, or may be lifted on tiny stems, stipitate, which may rest in turn upon a common sheet-like film, or more or less continuous net, spreading beneath them all, the _hypothallus_. In any case, each differentiated portion of the plasmodium, portion poorly or well defined, elongate, net-like, spheroidal, elliptical, or of whatever shape, becomes at length a sporangium, spore-case, receptacle for the development and temporary preservation of the spores.[5]