THE AMATEUR MICROSCOPIST DURING WARTIME. 71 



golf ball, collected from an old wall contained an extraordinary 

 number of bdelloid rotifers and water-bears. 



Opportunities arose at times for bathing in the sea, and our 

 first " find " in a little pool in the sand consisted practically 

 entirely of the polyparies of polyzoa and zoophytes ; of which I 

 made out at least six different species. These of course were 

 all dead, but the empty tubes contained many fine diatoms, 

 polycistina and foraminifera. Another marine expedition gave us 

 some fine specimens of medusa buds, of a kind of Obelia, with 

 sixteen tentacles to the bell. We got several alive under the 

 microscope ; but still more pleasing was the fairy beauty of the 

 adult polype like an exquisite flower in its crystal cup. This 

 lost nothing by being seen on a glorious summer afternoon with 

 a jocular nightingale, a familiar friend of ours, singing exuber- 

 antly a few yards ofi. At night in our little tent we were able 

 to see the tiny flashes of light on tapping the bottles containing 

 the polype. 



A call to sterner duty came one day, and dissolved the 

 " Society." 



When next I had opportunity to turn my attention to the old 

 pursuit, it was strangely enough not far from the same district. 

 I had no instrument but a pocket lens, but the "microscopic" 

 specimen was not difficult to see, being nothing less than a 

 huge patch of plasmodium of a mycetozoon crawling on an old 

 fungus-covered log in the garden of the little farm-house where 

 I was billeted. The daily change was readily seen as it threw 

 out a front line and communication lines in a bright orange 

 network, until it was quite 30 inches long and about half as wide. 

 This was in December 1917. I watched it until a few days' dry 

 frost seemed to dispel it, and presently there appeared in the 

 more shady and obscure parts of the log the purple berry-shaped 

 masses of sporangia. It was about five or six years previously 

 that I had been first initiated into the fascinating mysteries of 

 the mycetozoa, and I had often searched for them, but without 

 success. It was with no small delight, then, that I detached and 

 sent home some of the magnificent first haul of " myxies." I 

 lost no time in searching in a little wood near for more, and, after 

 diligent investigation of a number of old rotten tree stumps, 

 managed to secure three further different species. 



So ! I have shown you this little cameo, clean cut to me at 



