160 
WAYSIDE MOTES. 
now deny; many will, however, no doubt be found to deny the value of 
the new changes proposed by the Select Committee, just as, at the 
time, blood ran pretty warmly over the recommendations of the old 
Commission. These briefly are to the effect that, amongst other 
needed reforms, these schools should be more largely used than 
heretofore for the promotion of scientific and technical education, 
and that local authorities should be authorised to employ local rates 
for founding or contributing to laboratories and workshops in such 
schools in order to promote practical scientific education. This latter 
recommendation, by the way, opens some dubious points. The 
actual value of a scientific education is probably on the whole 
realised in proportion to possession of it. Hence popular con¬ 
stituencies may not perhaps be the best custodians of the funds for 
the promotion at any rate of pure, as distinguished from technical, 
scientific training. 
A Semi-aquatic Myxomycete.— The common habitats of the Myxomy- 
cetes or Slime-Fungi are damp surfaces such as rotten wood, earth, 
grass, moss, etc. A few species, belonging to a group allied to these, 
are, indeed, found in water. Such are most of the Monadinese, many of 
the species of which are parasitic, as indicated by their names, 
Vampyrella spirogyrce , Leptoplirys vorax , etc. To this group also belong 
the famous Protomyxa aurantiaca, so well known to all readers of 
Haeckel, and Plasmodiophora brassicce, which is now considered (one 
may say demonstrated) to be the cause of clubbing in the roots of the 
cabbage tribe. But the Eumycetozoa, or true Myxomycetes, though 
their spores require to germinate in a small quantity of water, are rarely 
found therein when the plasmodium has attained any considerable size. 
It was, therefore, a pleasure to me when Mr. Bolton called my attention 
to the long plasmodial strings of a Myxomycete which he had found in 
the water of a little aquarium, containing organisms collected by him 
about ten days before in a gravel pit at Hill Oak, near Sutton Coldfield. 
These strings passed among the Spirogyra threads, and formed a net¬ 
work which here and there reached the sides of the vessel; some of 
them were nearly five inches in length. They were of a semi-opaque, 
sub-hyaline appearance, and if a part was carefully placed in a trough 
or cell, under the microscope, the motion of the protoplasm could be 
clearly perceived, exactly resembling that of an Amoeba, except that 
it reversed its direction at tolerably regular intervals (about every half 
minute, according to my observations). A day or two afterwards some 
of the plasmodium was elevated into the air by the raising of the 
Spirogyra-mass to the surface, owing to the bubbles of oxygen entangled 
in it. At these points, and also where a small portion of the plasmo¬ 
dium had crawled up the surface of the glass vessel, sporangia were 
formed—white at first, but soon dusky brown, and finally bluish-grey ; 
the last appearance arose from the formation of star-like crystals of 
carbonate of lime on the darker surface of the spore-mass. The 
species was seen on a microscopical examination of the capillitium to 
be Physarurn nutans. W. B. Grove, B.A. 
The Leicester Flora—note on the review of. —Mr. Bagnall points 
out an error in my article which appeared under (Enanthe fiuviatilis ; 
there is no figure of it in the Dillenian Bay, only a description. I had 
in my memory, which, alas, was defective, an old drawing of it. This, 
of course, does not alter the point of the sentence. Nyman was my 
authority for the statement that Corydalis claviculata was first 
described by Persoon in the Synopsis. It is true Persoon describes it 
there as a Corydalis, and gives no reference to De Candolle, who, 
however, had previously described it in the Flore Frangaise. Alyssum 
