6 
NATURE NOTES. 
days, and you may be disappointed to find that none of the 
little creatures hatch out of their eggs. You may try another 
gathering and find the field of your microscope swarming with 
hundreds of them, all dancing together, within a couple of hours 
after the spores have been wetted. If you have a high power 
and are fortunate, you may now watch them feeding on bacteria 
and conducting all sorts of strange performances. Again, you 
may patiently watch these swarm-cells till they all die, and 
none of them may unite to form a plasmodimii , or if they do it 
may crawl for a week or two, but never change to spores. 
Indeed, it seems there is only one species as yet discovered that 
can be cultivated tlirough all its stages .from spore to sporan- 
gium with certainty of successful results. The sporangia of 
this can often be found looking like little specks of whitewash 
on dead leaves and decaying bundles of herbaceous stalks, and 
goes by the name of Chondrioderma difforme in Cooke’s Myxo- 
mycdes. It seems unlikel}' that this is the only species that 
can be so reared, and we may feel sure that sooner or later 
others will be discovered which may supply us with further 
knowledge regarding the puzzling questions of variation and 
development in this remarkable group. 
Leytonstone. Arthur Lister. 
THE HILLY FIELDS OF BROCKLEY. 
a LONG the whole distance b}" train between London 
j Bridge and New Cross, if the journey be taken by the 
I line to Folkestone and Dover, the eye can range over 
little else but a dreary level, covered continuously b}^ 
monotonous rows of small houses tenanted by a dense popula- 
tion. The rambling, crooked alleys and malodorous tanneries 
of Bermondsey are passed, yet the serried ranks of slate and 
brick continue with scarce a break, varied only by the tall 
chimneys of some factory, the blocks of model dwellings, or the 
ubiquitous Board School, which, like a giant in a crowd, more 
than head and shoulders above his fellows, towers aloft many a 
storey higher than the humble tenements around. Suddenly 
the houses cease for awhile, and the horizon now is bounded by 
an expanse of high green fields almost cliff-like in their character. 
Who does not know the charm of such an horizon, far away 
down in the country, when at close of day the sun casts his last 
beams upon the lofty meadows, and wakes up a warm emerald 
hue on the rose-coloured sk}’ behind ? But amid surroundings 
such as we have passed through, doubly welcome is the sight, 
and the contrast heightens the pleasure of gazing on it. 
It needs a stiff climb to reach the top of these fields, but 
even in the fast-vanishing light of the autumn afternoon it is a 
