212 LISTER : THE STUDY OF MYCETOZOA IN BRITAIN. 
This remarkable man, besides being a botanist, was an apothe¬ 
cary, a poet, a playwright, and a prolific writer. In a publisher’s 
catalogue recently received, I see he is briefly described as “ Sir 
John Hill, M.D., quack ! ” Although he seems to have been 
something ol a rogue, he must have had some spark of true 
enthusiasm for natural objects ; but he certainly had no sense of 
scientific accuracy. In his History of Plants, a great folio volume 
published 1751, he describes and illustrates, amongst the fungi, 
two new genera, Physarum and Arcyria, names still retained 
for genera of Mycetozoa, though now defined in very different 
terms from the mysterious and strange descriptions of Sir 
John Hill. He was never at a loss to recognize in the simplest 
sporangium evidence of male and female flowers, which evidence 
was of course entirely imaginary. Even Hill’s name is no 
longer quoted in systematic works as the authority for the 
genera he founded ; for the present rules of botanic nomen¬ 
clature recognize no author who wrote before 1753, the year 
in which Linnaeus published the first edition of his Species 
Plantarum. In this work, the principle of using binomial 
nomenclature was systematically adopted and has been em¬ 
ployed by practically all later writers. 
Little original work on fungi was produced in Britain during 
the later hall of the 18th century. William Hudson (born 
1730, died 1793), an apothecary living in London, published 
in 1762 Flora Anglica, a work which first established the Linnean 
system of classification in Britain. Amongst fungi, four species 
of Mycetozoa are very briefly described ; indeed, Hudson 
seems to have regarded fungi with no more favour than did 
the great Linnaeus himself. 
James Dickson (born 1738, died 1822), a Scotch nursery 
gardener and one of the original Fellows of the Linnean Society, 
wrote on British Cryptogamic botany. 5 He mentions a few 
Mycetozoa along with the fungi. Here we have the first descrip¬ 
tion and figure of Leocarpns fragilis, with its polished brown 
sporangia. It is placed with the puff-balls under the name 
Lycoperdon fragile. 
I may refer here to Edward Forster, an Essex botanist and 
a special lover of cryptogams. Born at Walthamstow in 
1765, Forster resided all his life near Epping Forest. By 
5 Fasciculus Plantar mu Cryptoganiicarum, 1785 . 
