Myxomycetes n. pl. (Bot.) A class of peculiar organisms, the slime molds, formerly regarded as animals (Mycetozoa), but now generally thought to be plants and often separated as a distinct phylum (Myxophyta); essentially equivalent to the division Myxomycota. They are found on damp earth and decaying vegetable matter, and consist of naked masses of protoplasm, often of considerable size, which creep very slowly over the surface and ingest solid food.
... days, when the microscope tells us that a plant may be an animal, or vice versa, or that an organism may be a plant now and something very like an animal a short time after (see Saville Kent on the "myxomycetes"). ... — Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
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