3°8 
LISTER 1 THE HAUNTS OF THE MYCETOZOA. 
dead leaves, we find their number is so large, and their appearing: 
so uncertain, that it is difficult to give more than a vague general 
account of them. 
Everywhere, and throughout the year, in moist weather are 
to be found on dead leaves the white-stalked sporangia of. 
Didymium squamnlosum ; and the goblet-shaped cups of 
Crater him minutum are almost as common. In some- 
seasons Physarum sinuosum and P. bitectum, both with 
compressed wavy sporangia, are conspicuous on heaps of dead 
elm and bramble leaves. Bramble bushes, indeed, where piles 
of both their own and other fallen leaves are held undisturbed 
in a cage of spiny branches, form a favoured haunt of many 
Mycetozoa. Mr. H. J. Howard describes 1 his thorough method of 
attacking such prickly strongholds in Norfolk woods. Armed 
with stout hedger’s gloves, and with a mackintosh kneeling mat,, 
he burrows into the centre of the bramble thicket, and there 
turns over every likely-looking leaf. He has been rewarded by 
discovering there large growths of Physarum carneum, a species 
new to Britain and only once before found outside Colorado ; 
and also quantities of the rare Physarum lateritium and Diderma 
simplex, none of which he found beyond the bramble clumps. 
On decaying sycamore leaves, in Wanstead Park, Didymium 
anellus and Badhamia foliicola are often abundant in autumn. 
Dead abler leaves mixed with bramble, in swampy copses, have 
yielded the handsome orange white-stalked Physarum luteo-album* 
Beech leaves, even when lying in deep and moist layers, 
seem to provide but meagre provender for plasmodium. Heaps 
of decaying holly leaves afford nourishment for many Mycetozoa. 
Here Didymium squamulosum is perhaps commonest, but 
D. nigripes is often present in vast profusion, as also are the 
charming iridescent violet and bronze sporangia of Lamproderma 
scintillans, and the neat brown regiments of Comatricha 
pulchella. In Epping Forest, the pearl-like sporangia of 
Margarita metallica have often been found on holly leaves. 
In a valley near Lyme Regis, Comatricha rubens and C. I arid a 
often abound in winter amongst the dead leaves of the ivy 
which carpets the ground. When these leaves, which often lie 
caked together in soft decaying masses, are peeled apart, on 
i See “Notes upon Physarum carneum G. Lister and Sturgis " in Journ. K Microscop . 
Soc., 1917, p. 266. 
