LISTER : THE STUDY OF MYCETOZOA IN BRITAIN. 
215 
Berkeley often visited Broome in his home near Bath, in a district 
where the moist wooded valleys formed a prolific hunting- 
ground for all kinds of fungi. Broome was a cultivated man 
of wide interests and somewhat austere habits. He had a 
retiring disposition, but proved a charming companion to his 
intimate friends. 
The next advance in our knowledge of Mycetozoa in Britain 
is due to one who has only lately been taken from us, Dr. M. 
•C. Cooke. To many of us,-Dr. Cooke was for a number of 
years a familiar figure on the occasion of our Club’s annual 
Fungus Forays, when he gave his valuable services as referee, 
and when, in the evenings, he would sum up the results of the 
day’s work, or give some pithy address on the wider aspects 
of fungus life. We well remember his short lean figure, his quiet 
energy, and the quaint humour with which he would enliven 
the most technical discourse. His Handbook of British Fungi, 
published in two volumes in 1871, was, as he tells us, 
a revision of Berkeley’s work. By adding descriptions of 
new species published since 1836, as well as of those 
continental species recently found in Britain, by giving 
concise keys to many genera and supplying excellent woodcuts 
illustrating every genus, Cooke produced an extremely 
valuable and convenient book of reference. As regards 
Mycetozoa, many species were added to those recorded in English 
Flora, but no critical attention was paid to the group. Cooke 
himself was well aware that the subject deserved better treat¬ 
ment. When, in 1875, Dr. Joseph Rostafinski published under 
the supervision of his great master, De Bary, his magnificent 
Monograph of Mycetozoa (written, alas ! in the Polish language), 
Cooke had the energy to translate into English all the keys of 
genera and species and the descriptions of such species as were 
then known to be British. The value of this book was much 
enhanced by the plates, which consist of reproductions of nearly 
all Rostafinski’s beautiful illustrations. In this modest- 
looking volume, entitled The Myxomycetes of Great Britain, 
English readers had for the first time a work dealing thoroughly 
with the microscopic structure of Mycetozoa, on the characters 
of which the true affinities of the species are found to depend. 
It is curious that, with all his respect for the work of De Bary 
and his pupils, Cooke disregarded the new light shed on the life- 
