Arthur Lister. 



v 



precision the arrangement of the gills. A wash of gum and water on the 

 back of the blotting paper sets the spores, and a beautiful self-recorded 

 " sporograph," or picture in its own spores, of the under surface of the pileus . 

 is obtained. 



His brother and his wife came each year from Scotland to spend their 

 Christmas holiday at Leytonstone or, later, at Lyme. Much time would be 

 given, if frost permitted, Co skating, which they both keenly enjoyed, or to 

 forest walks, in the company of the children and their cousins. But all the 

 notes and drawings of the work in hand would be shown, room would be 

 made at a table for a second microscope (which had been their father's and 

 was always referred to as " Augustus ") and the two brothers would pursue the 

 investigations together, often even skipping about the room in their whole- 

 hearted joy at the unfolding revelations. 



About the year 1879, when working at lichens, and desiring to read Stahl's 

 important papers on their strange double nature, he set himself, with his 

 eldest daughter's assistance, to learn German. This was entered on Avith 

 characteristic vigour, his brother gladly participating, when on his holiday 

 visits. Several of the poems of Goethe and Schiller were committed to 

 memory and repeated with great enjoyment. 



My father's friend, Dr. D. H. Scott (" dear Scott " as he used to call him), 

 has borne testimony to the thoroughness of his work at lichens. During a 

 visit to Leytonstone he says, " The conversation turned on the question of 

 the fertilisation in lichens, as described by Stahl, on whose conclusions some 

 doubt had at that time been cast by the school of Brefeld. It then turned 

 out that Mr. Lister had fully investigated the subject for himself ; he 

 showed the writer a series of drawings of the reproductive processes in 

 Gollema, which went far to substantiate Stahl's views, since strongly confirmed 

 by the work of Baur and Darbishire." * 



"While his nephews and elder son were in their boyhood my father was an 

 enthusiastic collector of British Lepidoptera, and delightful evenings were 

 spent in sugaring the trees in his own garden and in Epping Forest. This 

 was done in part to encourage a love of natural history in the boys, but 

 largely also from his own love of these exquisite products of Nature's 

 workmanship. His other excursions on the zoological side of the border, 

 apart from the Mycetozoa, were mainly concerned with such animals as he 

 met in the course of his microscopical work. There are, however, accurate 

 drawings of his of the ascidian Peropliora listcri found washed up in a storm 

 on the beach at Lyme. He was particularly interested in this species because 

 it had been one of the objects investigated by his father, after whom it was 

 named. With one of the new lenses constructed by himself he had been the 

 first to observe the remarkable reversal in the direction of the heart beats 

 now known to be characteristic of ascidians.f 



"When my parents settled at Leytonstone it was still a comparatively 



* ' Journal of Botany,' October, 1908, p. 333. 

 t ' Phil. Trans.,' 1834, p. 365. 



