210 LISTER: THE STUDY OF MYCETOZOA IN BRITAIN. 
alpine situations dose to the melting winter snows' I remember 
seeing in Switzerland, high on the alps, the white sporangia, 
of that hardy species Diderma niveum clustered on the slender 
stalk of a blue Soldanella flower which had just pierced through 
the snow. In this case, the ‘‘plasmodium” (or feeding stage)' 
of the Diderma must have been spent on turf underneath the 
snow-mantle in an almost freezing atmosphere. 
When we come to history, the very first published record that 
I know of any species of the Mycetozoa was made more than, 
two hundred years ago by our illustrious fellow-countryman,. 
John Ray (born 1627 ; died 1704). We Essex people may 
well be proud of the fact that so noble and distinguished a man 
was a native of our county. In the pages of the Essex 
Naturalist, Prot. Boulger and Mr. Miller Christy have given 
interesting accounts of the chief events of Ray’s Life, 1 and of 
his work, which forms a landmark in the history of both botany 
and zoology. The son of a village blacksmith, Ray became 
a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and eventually one 
of the most eminent naturalists of his day. His travels at 
home and abroad with his friend and fellow-worker, Willughby, 
his work on birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, as well as on 
plants, his patient endurance of ill-fortune and ill-health— 
neither of which damped his enthusiasm or industry—I must 
not dwell cn here. What concerns my subject is that, in the 
second edition of his Synopsis of British Plants, published 
169b, he desciibes 2 a certain small scarlet fungus with a spherical 
head filled with yellow fluid, which had been found by his friend. 
Dr. Richardson. This brief description has been accepted 
by later writers as applying undoubtedly to the young stage of 
Lycogala epidendrum. All of us who have searched for 
Mycetozoa must have met with this species on some old log, 
looking when it first emerges from the v r ood like a group of 
coral-coloured peas, ircm which. when injured, the orange- 
pink spore-material oozes out. 3 
1 See “ Report of the Ray, Dale, and Allen Commemoraton Fund, 1912.” by Miller 
Christy (Essex Naturalist, vol. xvii., p. 129), and “ A Eulogy of John Ray, Samuel Dale, and‘ 
Benjamin Allen,” by Prof. G. S. Boulger (loc. cit., p. 146)- 
2 Synopsis Mcthodica Stirpium Biitannicarum, ed. 2, p. 339. 
3 Since writing the above, I have found considerably earlier and unmistakable 
reterence to one of the Mycetozoa in the Herbarium Portatilc of Dr. Thomas Panckow, 
published in Berlin, 1654. In this herbal, the first of the numerous illustrations is entitled 
‘ Fungi cito cresccnfes ” (fungi of rapid growth) and portrays several characteristic groups 
of aethalia of Lycogala epidendrum , the same species at that described by Ray : the title 
