Fetch : Some Holderncss Myxomycetes. 339 



have lived (and learned) to manag-e Highland properties, and 

 who still know how to diO so, the foil}' and suicidal burning- oi' 

 vast stretches of old heather is a sig-ht sickening- and heart- 

 breakingf, done to please the fashion which makes a stag worth 

 the fancy price of ^^30. Tom, Dick, and Harry may— nay 

 ' mtist' — shoot stagiS, just as nine-tenths of holiday anglers needs 

 must ^o and kill tons (literally) of 'sea-trout tidal kelts ' in April, 

 May, and even June, before the true ' clean run ' — i.e., clean run 

 from the real salt water —come with the spring-tides and floods 

 "of July.-:'^ 



What has become of the succulent so-called 'reindeer-moss,' 

 good early spring deer-food, and what has become of the heather 

 which formed part of their winter-feeding? Burned out, sir- 

 burned out. Suicidal policy ! Bracken and rabbits, rabbits and 

 bracken — say, twenty years' hence, when I will likely not be 

 alive to see it — 'from Cape Wrath to Finisterre ' (or at least 

 to the southernmost stretch of the N.W. Highlands). 



SOME HOLDERNESS MYXOMYCETES. 



T. FETCH, H.Sc, B.A., 



Mr don. 



During the Christmas vacation of 1902 the casual discovery of 

 a Myxomycete on the Humber lands led me, in the absence 

 of other occupation, to investigate a few likely places in the 

 neighbourhood of Hedon in the hope of finding more. Hedon 

 is situated at the edge of the Humber alluvial flats which, 

 without the protection of the banks, would be inundated by 

 nearly every tide ; and as is usual in such districts, modern 

 agriculture allows only a few trees in the hedgerows or an 

 occasional spinny in some odd corner, planted, in this case, 

 within the last hundred years. Want of time prevented any 

 investigation of the more wooded morainic hills of Paull. All 

 the following species were collected within a mile of Hedon, 

 and the list merely indicates what may be expected in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of an average village during the last week 

 of the year. 



*Yet 'The Field' (published in Londo)i)\ and even our friend's (Mr. 

 Marston's) ' Fishing- Gazette ' publish record-takes of tidal kelts from Vthan 

 in the east, to the Hebride Isles, in April, May, June ; and the syndicates 

 and the hotels advertise ' early sea-trout ' {' early Scottish sea-trout' if you 

 must have it full) as inducements to green and Holiday anglers. 

 1903 September i. 



