2
THE MYCETOZOA :
alpine situations close to the melting winter snows I remember
seeing in Switzerland, high on the alps, the white sporangia
of that hardy species Diderma niveum clustered on the slender
stalk of a blue Soldanella flower which had just pierced through
the snow. In this case, the ''plasmodium" (or feeding stage)
of the Diderma must have been spent on turf underneath the
snow-mantle in an almost freezing atmosphere.
When we come to history, the very first published record that
I know of any species of the Mycetozoa was made more than
two hundred years ago by our illustrious fellow-countryman,
John Ray (born 1627 ; died 1704). We Essex people may
well be proud of the fact that so noble and distinguished a man
was a native of our county. In the pages of the Essex
Naturalist, Prof. Boulger and Mr. Miller Christy have given
interesting accounts of the chief events of Ray's Life,1 and of
his work, which forms a landmark in the history of both botany
and zoology. The son of a village blacksmith, Ray became
a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and eventually one
of the most eminent naturalists of his day. His travels at
home and abroad with his friend and fellow-worker, Willughby,
his work on birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, as well as on
plants, his patient endurance of ill-fortune and ill-health—
neither of which damped his enthusiasm or industry—I must
not dwell on here. What concerns my subject is that, in the
second edition of his Synopsis of British Plants, published
1696, he describes2 a certain small scarlet fungus with a spherical
head filled with yellow fluid, which had been found by his friend,
Dr. Richardson. This brief description has been accepted
by later writers as applying undoubtedly to the young stage of
Lycogala epidendrum. All of us who have searched for
Mycetozoa must have met with this species on some old log,
looking when it first emerges from the wood like a group cf
coral-coloured peas, from which, when injured, the orange-
pink spore-material oozes out.3
1 See " Report of the Ray. Dale, and Allen Commemoraton Fund. 1912," by Miller
Christy {Essex Naturalist, vol. xvii.. p. 129). and" A Eulogy of John Ray. Samuel Dale, and
Benjamin Allen." by Prof. G. S. Boulger (loc. cit., p. 146).
2 Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum, ed. 2. p. 339.
3 Since writing the above, I have found considerably earlier and unmistakable
reference to one of the Mycetozoa in the Herbarium Portatile of Dr. Thomas Panckow,
published in Berlin, 1654. In this herbal, the first of the numerous illustrations is entitled
" Fungi cito crescentes " (fungi of rapid growth) and portrays several characteristic groups
of aethalia of Lycogala epidendrum, the same species as that described by Ray : the title