4 THE MYCETOZOA :
This remarkable man, besides being a botanist, was an apothe-
cary, a poet, a playwright, and a prolific writer. In a publisher's
catalogue recently received, I see he is briefly described as " Sir
John Hill, M.D., quack ! " Although he seems to have been
something of a rogue, he must have had some spark of true
enthusiasm for natural objects ; but he certainly had no sense of
scientific accuracy. In his History of Plants, a great folio volume
published 1751, he describes and illustrates, amongst the fungi,
two new genera, Physarum and Arcyria, names still retained
tor genera of Mycetozoa, though now defined in very different
terms from the mysterious and strange descriptions of Sir
John Hill. He was never at a loss to recognize in the simplest
sporangium evidence of male and female flowers, which evidence
was of course entirely imaginary. Even Hill's name is no
longer quoted in systematic works as the authority for the
genera he founded ; for the present rules of botanic nomen-
clature recognize no author who wrote before 1753, the year
in which Linnaeus published the first edition of his Species
Plantarum. In this work, the principle of using binomial
nomenclature was systematically adopted and has been em-
ployed by practically all later writers.
Little original work on fungi was produced in Britain during
the later half of the 18th century. William Hudson (born
1730, died 1793), an apothecary living in London, published
in 1762 Flora Anglica, a work which first established the Linnean
system of classification in Britain. Amongst fungi, four species
of Mycetozoa are very briefly described ; indeed. Hudson
seems to have regarded fungi with no more favour than did
the great Linnaeus himself.
James Dickson (born 1738, died 1822), a Scotch nursery
gardener and one of the original Fellows of the Linnean Society,
wrote on British Cryptogamic botany.5 He mentions a few
Mycetozoa along with the fungi. Here we have the first descrip-
tion and figure of Leocarpus fragilis, with its polished brown
sporangia. It is placed with the puff-balls under the name
Lycoperdon fragile.
I may refer here to Edward Forster, an Essex botanist and
a special lover of cryptogams. Born at Walthamstow in
1765, Forster resided all his life near Epping Forest. By
5 Fasciculus Plantarum Cryptogamicarum, 1785.