THE MYCETOZOA.
and his pupils, Cooke disregarded the new light shed on the life-
history of the Mycetozoa, and continued, as his predecessors
had done, to regard them as true fungi.
This is not the occasion to dwell on the work accomplished
by Cooke for the study of fungi generally. A full account of
this, with a delightful sketch of his varied and active career,
is given by Mr. Ramsbottom in a memoir published in the
Transactions of the British Mycological Society for 1914.
A staunch supporter of De Bary's and Cienkowski's view
that Mycetozoa may well be claimed as belonging to the Protozoa
was Wm. Saville Kent, the author of an elaborate Manual of
Infusoria. In his own cultures, he watched swarm-cells emerge
from the spores of species of Badhamia, Stemonitis, etc., and saw
that they fed on bacteria and would even ingest carmine granules.
An interesting account of his observations appeared in The
Popular Science Review for 1881, accompanied with careful
illustrations. The tone of this article (which strikes one now
as somewhat contentious) was due to an attack made by Cooke
challenging the accuracy of his work ; but these matters, treating
of " battles long ago," are now of little interest.
The death only a few weeks ago of Mr. George Massee, who,
like Cooke, did much for British Mycology, and who also has been
such a faithful friend of our Field Club by acting for many
years as referee at its Fungus Forays, comes with the sense of
a great loss. His handsome Monograph of the Myxogastres,
published in 1892, deals with Mycetozoa from all parts of the
world, and is illustrated with twelve coloured plates. This
book firings together a large amount of interesting information
in a clear and attractive manner. To my father, when writing
his own monograph, mentioned hereafter, Mr. Massee's book was
of very great assistance.
I turn now to my father's work on Mycetozoa, on which
I should like to dwell rather more fully.6 He did not take
up this study until middle life, but his love of nature was, I
think, inborn. Even as a child, everything out of doors, the
clouds and wind, the country generally, appealed to him with
a strange fascination. In his pleasant home at Upton, to
watch and know birds gave him rapturous delight. As a boy
at school, he made a collection of mosses, but it was not until
6 Arthur Lister (born 1830. died 1908).