266 Transactions of the Society, 



kind consideration till early in September. Almost by return of 

 post ]\Iiss Lister informed me that my find was Physarum carneiun 

 G. Lister and Sturgis, and that it was the first known British 

 gathering. 



Naturally, a further visit to the wood was made at the earliest 

 opportunity ; this was on September 16. P. carneum was found in 

 the same spot and also in another place ; the sporangia were in 

 an immature state, and of a pale orange-yellow colour. Later, 

 sporangia were found in all stages of development : opaque white, 

 pale amber, sessile and stalked sporangia being found upon one 

 stem of bracken. In every case, even in the immature specimens, 

 there was a cup-like darker area where the stalk joined the 

 sporangium-head. Specimens were found over quite a wide area 

 as late as September 30. 



Here a brief account of the wood and the exact habitat of the 

 species may prove of interest, as the locality has yielded several 

 specimens of Mycetozoa hitherto not recorded in the Norfolk lists. 

 The area could scarcely be termed a wood in the true sense of the 

 word, but it is somewhat varied in character, combining heath, low 

 banks, and hills covered with bramble and bracken and surmounted 

 with fir- and oak-trees. The portion yielding several species of 

 Mycetozoa consists of gently sloping banks of rich dark earth, witli 

 a path between ; the banks render the portions adjacent to the path 

 shady and fairly damp, even in summer. It was in the dense 

 growth of brambles that P. carneuyn was found. 



Armed with thick leather gloves, and a stout stick, dressed 

 preferably in one's oldest clothes, one had to beat a passage into 

 the dense undergrowth of brambles and get down on hands and 

 knees upon a mackintosh square to scan the broken stems. The 

 colour of the sporangia made detection difficult except upon very 

 close inspection. 



Physarum carneum G. Lister and Sturgis was first found, in some 

 abundance, on dead wood on Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs, 

 by Dr. W. G. Sturgis, in the autumn of 1908, and was described m 

 the Journal of Botany.* 



In the Norfolk gatherings, although the actual plasmodium 

 was not found, sporangia of an opaque white colour were gathered 

 which could not have been far removed from the plasmodium 

 stage. These became translucent and of a pale amber colour ; after- 

 wards they became more opaque, showing a darker cup-like basal 

 area. The colour then became a deeper orange-yellow, and the 

 evenly-distributed lime-granules made their appearance in tlie 

 sporangium-wall. The sporangia were mostly scattered in short 

 rows on stems a few inches from the ground, but in some cases 

 were gregarious ; they were stalked and globose as a general rule, 



* Journ. Bot.,xlviii. (1910) p. 73. 



