78 Rhodora [APRIL 
flat on the surface of a log or stump, perhaps half-way up the bole of 
some oak tree, perhaps spread in golden profusion over some bed of 
leaves or even living moss, the forming fructification of F/igo, a mass 
of yellow not unlike the broken yolk of an egg, sometimes tinged about 
the margin by shades of red and brown, but conspicuous, commanding 
attention alike by its color and its substance, now as two hundred years 
ago, when Marchand first described it about the tan-yards of Paris. 
This is at once the largest of the slime moulds and, with us, the earliest 
to form its fruit. In 1882, Sachs, in his celebrated lectures on the 
Physiology of Plants, tells of this species in language which will doubt- 
less seem a wonder-story even yet to many readers ; yet all that Sachs 
says of this species is strictly true. Schweinitz, who both in this coun- 
try and in Europe, a hundred years ago, collected and named not a 
few slime moulds, but who really little understood their nature, tells of 
a specimen found by a blacksmith's forge (in South Carolina), in the 
morning, calmly fruiting on iron that had been red hot the night 
before! A century or two earlier, this had certainly been a portent or 
a prodigy. If our student is fortunate enough to find his specimen in 
its mucilaginous condition, having just concluded its migrations, he 
may leave it to be revisited, Jove favente, on the following day, when 
instead of slime he may expect to find a more or less hardened crust 
like stiffened foam, overlying a mass of sooty spores, dry and fine. 
This is the final fruit. A few days later the wind will have borne the 
spores away and only a thin whitish film may remain behind to mark 
the place of the singular transformation. 
Fuligo is perhaps the first slime mould to be recognized by the be- 
Sinner, If a student of fungi, especially if a collector of puff-balls, he 
has probably already made the acquaintance of the common Zycoga/a 
epidendrum (Buxb.) L. The plasmodium of this species is red, not a 
very deep red, but bright enough to attract attention; to the older 
writers suggestive of vermilion. ‘This appears usually a little later in 
the year, say in July, August, and so through the fall. 
Following closely on the maturing of //igo, or even contemporary 
with it, are to be found the plasmodia of many other species, less 
frequently observed because in general less conspicuous. They may 
be sought by rotting logs, around settled heaps of wind-driven leaves, 
in neglected corners of the garden. Here we may meet the pale 
venulose creeping threads of some of the Didymia, the richer yellows 
of the Badhamia species, the creamy nets of some of the Didermas, 
