110
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
life including the plants but also the habitats in which they had their being,
and latterly his efforts were concentrated in that direction with eminent
success. His herbarium is now at the Smithsonian Institution in Washing-
ton.
To his wife and son Richard the club offer their sincere condolences in
their great loss.
DR JOHN RAMSBOTTOM, O.B.E., M.A., D.Sc., V.M.H., F.L.S.
(1885-1975)
(President 1936-1939)
Dr J. Ramsbottom was elected an Honorary Member of the Essex
Field Club in 1930. He was President from 1936 to 1939. During his time
as President he played an important part in the negotiations with the (then)
West Ham Corporation in their takeover of the Museum. Long before the
Second World War Dr Ramsbottom had led and conducted the Fungus
Forays each autumn, and helped those of us who were amateurs in the
field of mycology and had given us a brilliant picture of that aspect of
field botany.
He will be remembered for his paper on Dry Rot in Wooden Ships,
and his revelation of the part played by mycorrhizal fungi in woodlands,
and also in the germination of Orchid seeds. He was consulted by H.M.
Government on many matters concerned with fungal development, in
particular the damage caused by dry-rot in abandoned bombed buildings
in 1940-1945. He was keeper of Botany at the British Museum (South
Kensington) from 1929 to 1950 when he retired.
After his retirement he gathered his vast knowledge of fungi (not only
botanical but literary, superstitious, medical and commercial) into the
material for a book in the New Naturalist Series called Mushrooms and
Toadstools (Collins 1953) which is a scholarly but readable account of the
larger fungi; perhaps more scientific than many in that series, but none the
less valuable for that his chapter on the 'quadruple' sex phenomena in
some fungi, such as Coprinus spp., is remarkable for its detail.
He took his degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He served in
Salonika from 1917, where he was a Captain in the R.A.M.C., being thrice
mentioned in dispatches. He was created an O.B.E., and in 1965 the
Linnaean Society awarded him a Gold Medal.
Dr Ramsbottom had a strong sense of fun and a dry northern humour.
He was one of many distinguished Presidents which it has been the good
fortune of the Essex Field Club to obtain.