20.
Obituary.
Dr. JOHN RAMSBOTTOM O.B.E., M.A., D.Sc., V.M.H., F.L.S.
(1885 - 1974) (President Essex Field Club 1936-39)
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 take over 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 1929-1950 until he retired.
After his retirement he gathered his vast know-
ledge of fungi (not only botanical but literary,
superstition, medical and commercial) into the material
for a book in the New Naturalist Series called 'Mushrooms
and Toadstalls' (Collins 1953) which is a scholarly but
readable account of the larger fungi; perhaps more
scientific than many in that series, but non the less
valuable for that. His Chapter on the Quadruple' sex
phenomena in some fungi, such as Coprinus sp. is
remarkable for its detail.
He took his degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
He served in Salonika from 1917, where he was 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