THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
223
THE ANNUAL FUNGUS FORAY (765TH MEETING).
SATURDAY, 10TH OCTOBER, 1936.
A considerable company, of whom nearly one hundred remained to
tea and the ensuing meeting, took part in the annual Fungus Foray held,
as usual, in conjunction with the British Mycological Society, in Epping
Forest.
Starting from Loughton shortly before 11 o'clock, the party, divided
into smaller groups according to individual tastes, scoured the Forest
diligently in various directions during the morning and early afternoon.
Somewhat to the surprise of the leaders, who, in view of the recent dry
weather, had anticipated poor results, a considerable quantity of material,
representing a wide range of forms, was later assembled at the head-
quarters, the Roserville Retreat, where the accumulated spoils of the day
were displayed, duly named, on trestle-tables. A gratifying feature
was the number of young students who were to be seen busily noting
in their notebooks the names of specimens collected by themselves shortly
before.
Following tea at 4.30 o'clock, a formal meeting of the Club was held,
with the President in the Chair, supported by Mr. F. G. Gould, President
of the British Mycological Society, and the several Conductors and
Referees, who were, in turn, called upon to give their reports on the
day's results.
Mr. Gould, after expressing his appreciation of the help given him
by members of the party in arranging the displayed specimens upon
the tables, called attention to the aesthetics of the agarics, which exhibit
many beautiful variations of colour and form ; at the same time he urged
greater attention to the less conspicuous and micro-forms, many of which
are of economic importance.
Miss Lister said she felt that, as the myxomycetes were really not
fungi at all, but considered by students of the group to be animals, they had
no place in a "fungus" foray, nevertheless she was glad to follow the
older ideas of classification and regard them, for the nonce, as "fungi."
Today's foray had been, from her point of view, a most successful one ;
not only had 25 varieties been found during the day (as contrasted with
17 met with in a recent week's hunting at Killarney), but one of them,
Physarum psittacinum, had only once previously been recorded for Essex.
Mr. Pearson thought the results of the day's foray were surprising,
having regard to the dry ground. He hoped that some of the young
students present would take up the study of the agarics seriously, as
there was a lack of young workers at the subject. He referred to recent
alterations in nomenclature proposed by Continental mycologists, and
thought we should have to abandon some of the specific names to which
we had grown accustomed in this country.
Mr. Cooke, President of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society,
was present as a visitor and was invited by the Chairman to address
the company. Mr. Cooke said he had had the privilege of joining our
Fungus Foray on several occasions and considered Epping Forest to be
an excellent area to work for funguses ; but he still thought Norfolk
could beat it in number of species recorded. On the other hand, he