Arthur Lister. 



IX 



In 1892 he was invited by Mr. Wm. Carruthers, the head of the Botanical 

 Department of the British Museum, to prepare a Descriptive Catalogue of 

 the collections of Mycetozoa in the Museum, and into the preparation of this 

 he and his daughter threw all their energies. Lodgings were taken at Kew 

 while the collections in the Herbarium were overhauled, and a pleasant 

 visit was made to Strasburg, where were de Bary's collections in the guardian- 

 ship of phis successor in the Chair of Botany, Graf zu Solms Laubach. From 

 him they had a most friendly reception, and it was a great pleasure to all 

 the family when he paid a return visit, a few years later, to the home 

 at Lyme. 



The catalogue, when complete, took the form of a monograph of the 

 group. It was published in 1894. My father also presented to the Museum 

 samples, whole and mounted on slides, of all the species and varieties known 

 to him, and the show case of the Mycetozoa in the Botanical Department is 

 enriched with beautiful water-colour drawings by his daughter, giving 

 magnified views of typical specimens of the group. He took a patriotic 

 pride in thus making the collection in the British Museum as complete as it 

 lay in his power to make it. 



The monograph had a sale unwonted in the series, and my father was 

 invited to prepare for the Mycetozoa one of the small paper-covered guides to 

 the collections which are issued by the departments, and this also attained 

 considerable popularity. 



The publication of these works, far from bringing any pause in their labours, 

 led, on the contrary, to a great increase in their circle of correspondents and 

 in the specimens referred to them for examination. 



The United States, where the group has been much studied, the West 

 Indies, New Zealand, Japan, Java, Borneo, Ceylon, and, in Europe, Germany, 

 France, Scandinavia, Portugal, Switzerland — many were the post-marks on 

 the small neat packages or large cases which frequently arrived from abroad. 



All this demanded long hours of strenuous labour from my father and his 

 daughter, and it was often not till driven out by the growing dusk that they 

 started on their accustomed ramble. Papers were published as before as 

 material accumulated, dealing with new and interesting forms. 



From the abundant material from all parts of the world which thus came 

 to him, all carefully digested and illustrated in the note-books, my father and 

 his daughter came to possess a knowledge of the typical characters of the 

 species and the range of variation of which each is capable, which was 

 unequalled. A second edition of the monograph was soon called for and 

 it was to the preparation of this, strenuously carried on notwithstanding- 

 failing health and powers, that the later years of his life were devoted. 

 It has been published since his death by his daughter (1911). The 

 beautiful illustrations, many coloured, are far superior to those of the first 

 edition (partly the result of the progress which has been made in late years 

 in the art of mechanical reproduction), and the text embodies the mature 

 results of their joint labours on the specific characters of the group. "Workers 



VOL. lxxxviii. — B. d 



