Journal of 



Applied Microscopy. 



Volume II. NOVEMBER, 1899. Number 11 



On Studying Slime Moulds. 



FIRST PAPER. 



For readers of the Journal, a discussion of this theme would seem less 

 necessary after the very suggestive papers offered by Prof. Ayers last year. 

 What I may say will, therefore, be considered simply as supplementary to the 

 papers referred to, and will relate, in part at least, to phases of the subject less 

 fully presented. 



In the first place, then, I would emphasize the idea that the proper place to 

 begin the study of these curious organisms, as indeed of living things generally, 

 is in the field. He was a smart boy who, when asked where fossils were found, 

 replied, " In the museum." His answer may not have been deficient in accuracy, 

 but it certainly revealed a bad system of pedagogics. If we are to study nature 

 to any purpose, we must go where nature is. True, we need laboratories and all 

 appliances, but these come later ; we should begin out of doors. 



For Myxomycetes, then, I should first escort my pupil to the nearest bit of 

 woodland, undisturbed. Not that woodland is indispensable ; it is not. These 

 things flourish too on the prairies, the plains, away out on the desert ; but the 

 woods are preeminently their home, and there the various phases of their history 

 can be followed to highest advantage. Our undisturbed bits of primeval forest 

 are fine, but the groves and thickets of the city park are sometimes equally 

 productive. The lamented Dr. Rex, the foremost student of this group in the 

 United States, if not in the world, found Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, an 

 ample field for the labor of many years. Even the planted groves of our prairie 

 farms, if not disturbed by cattle or other animals, afford habitat to some 

 ubiquitous species, and will doubtless be richer and offer a more varied flora as 

 the years go by. 



In the woodlands, then, the Myxomycetes begin their activity about the first 

 of June, in the latitude of our Northern states, and continue active, save as 

 hindered by occasional drought, far into the autumn, sometimes in Iowa up to 

 November 15, During all this time, especially in warm, wet weather, our 

 student may find plasmodia, — free, raw protoplasm — streaming about to his 

 heart's content. The amount discoverable in one place seems conditioned by 

 the amount of nutrition available, and by that alone. An undisturbed old log, or 

 a wide mat of decaying leaves, will often show plasmodia of surprising extent. 



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