THREE NEW RECORDS OF MYCETOZOA FOR ESSEX. 35
42. 1930. Various Notes on the Birds of Essex. W.E.Glegg.
The Essex Naturalist, V. 23, pp. 18-28.
43. 1934. The Domestic Fowl in Pre-Roman Britain. Miss
D. M. A. Bate. The Ibis, pp. 390-5.
THREE NEW RECORDS OF MYCETOZOA
FOR ESSEX.
By G. LISTER, F.L.S.
OWING to his skilled observation and perseverance and to
the favourable season, Mr. J. Ross was able to collect
thirty-six species of Mycetozoa during the month of January,
1935, in the Epping Forest district; of these, three are new
records for the County. Our list of Essex Mycetozoa is thus
brought up to a hundred and one. The past two years having
been exceptionally dry, it was not until the heavy rainfall
of December that the heaps of fallen leaves were completely
soaked and were in that stage when the plasmodia that feed
on leaves could thrive on them. In summer and autumn the
species feeding on dead wood usually predominate; during
last January the leaf-haunting species amounted to more than
half the total number of those found.
The part of the Forest which proved most prolific was near
Warren Hill, not far from the Loughton road, where in a plan-
tation of varied trees, sycamore, plane, poplar, wych-elm, lime,
hawthorn, holly, beech, and oak, with an undergrowth of
bramble, the fallen leaves had been little disturbed. It was here
that eleven species were found, including the three new records:
these are Lepidoderma Chailletii Rost., Perichaena vermicularis
(Schwein.) Rost. and Mucilago spongiosa (Leysser) Morgan.
Lepidoderma Chailletii is apparently an uncommon and a
winter species in this country. It has been obtained once only
in Devon, Somerset and Worcestershire, four times in Bedford-
shire, and now in Essex. The sporangia usually form extensive
colonies ; they are drab in colour, and often harmonize with the
dead leaves or soil on which they occur. Their walls have a
somewhat mealy surface from being closely studded with small
crystalline scales of carbonate of lime : the upper walls are
thin and break open, allowing the mass of dark capillitium and