Editorial 1 Part 1

66

EDITORIAL.

EDITORIAL. BEAUTY

SPOTS

AND

UGLIFICATION.

'' I take with me only happy memories; not the least among them, memories of your countryside.

I know its haunting loveliness will come back to me again and again in quiet moments," confided the United States Ambassador when leaving for America last spring.

Quite naturally, we cannot estimate the quiet charm and finished beauty of our own land as can foreigners.

Through their eyes only is it possible to estimate how splendid and precious is our birth-right of charm and beauty, that we at home take so callously for granted and which, for enduring satisfaction, can certainly be matched nowhere eise in the wide world.

Imagine a typical stretch of Suffolk roadside scenery, duplicated innumerably : The road goes winding down into a village (because all the first inhabitants needed water), it curves over an old grey bridge and so on, past a millennial gothic church near lost in greenery, through the village street where stand pargetted and halftimbered plaster houses that are thatched, a few of rich-red Georgian brick, porticoed and stately, backed by the quaint old hostelry beneath its pictured sign. As an incident, such grouping of familiar things would barely be noticed by any motorist, unless 'there occurred one of those exceptional combinations of the picturesque, such as Kersey presents from either hill-crest, making even the high-speed driver pause a space for contemplation.

Any so typical a scene does not exist in the United States ; their beauty is rather on the grandiose scale, such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park.

But over there show-places are separated by immense distances of nothing in particular ; and, in any case, wherever you go, are no examples of an immemorial civilisation melting naturally, as it seems, into the lovely landscape.

Here we have, if we could but be brought to appreciate it, a noble and splendid birth-right in the land that nurtured us, truly one " where every prospect pleases and only man is vile."

For though some of it is already utterly spoiled, by far the greater part remains rural; and, after travelling elsewhere, it becomes astounding how much of this our England, so diminutive and so densely populated a country, retains its pristine prettiness.

Small wonder, then, that Mr. J. H. Tidbury should consider, in writing to the local Press last April, that " some of us are able and Willing to slow on corners and change gear on hills, if thereby we may travel on our ways through beauty.

But far, far too many of the millions we motorists pay in taxation are being spent only on making it possible to pass more quickly from ugliness through ugliness to ugliness."

EDITORIAL.

67

All Beauty, even that copied by the portrait-painter, is essentially natural, and so the affair of Naturalists ; but, usually, Naturalists are anything but practical persons, with the result that we have been allotted less than our due share in the counsels of such central bodies as are most laudably fighting the rural uglifier and all his Gorgon tendrils, petrifying Nature.

A basic one is the wholesale extirpation of our ground-flora that has resulted from the soi-disant " Nature S t u d y " in elementary schools.

So virulent has the evil grown in some parts of the country, more culpable in this respect than Suffolk, that we find the Berkshire county council passing by-laws anent it last May. These salutary measures prohibit the uprooting of all Ferns and Plants whatsoever, growing in any road, lane, common, bank and hedge whereto the public has access, under a penalty of a couple of pounds at the first, and five for each of later, offences. The Suffolk Naturalists' Society has sent out Protests during the past year to the parish councils of Stuston and Eye and Knoddishall, drawing attention to the unnecessarily large extent of Gorse upon their commons at Stuston and Cranley and Blackheath that has been apparently intentionally burned, with a view to äff Ording increased pasture for commoners.

Replies indicate such fires to have been accidental in each case.

But accidental fires usually originate in carelessness ; and one clerk threw the onus upon the County council's road steamrollers. Such rollers, and steam-ploughs in fields, undoubtedly give rise to conflagrations of long stretches of brown and withered hedge-rows, like those that were to be seen last August at Beyton, Brockley, and many another village. Nevertheless, the most devastating fire of the year was caused by the perennial tripper-lout, on Blythburgh heath : here the licking flame spread with a southerly breeze from sere bracken into Foxburrow Wood, one of the most delightfully primitive in the County, whence volumes of smoke were rising on 30th September, be it noted, after the heavy rains of 29th.

Such woods are the most colourful objects of our countryside and, of all things, the most English.

Year by year, and now under the accursed new land regime with greater celerity than in former years, are our glorious woods given over to the ruthless contractor's saw; veteran trees come crashing down, the plough passes over the whole, and . . . .

But let us, too, pass from battle, murder and sudden death. In this year of grace 1929 Letheringham Old Park, where the De Bovilles, Wingfields and Nauntons had hunted from Conquestal times, has fallen, along with a nearly equally historic wood in Bradfield St. Cläre near Maypole Green.

We have issued a Protest against tree-felling in both Brandon and Redlingfield; but

68

EDITORIAL.

likely others have gone, too, for such are usually far from roads where can be heard the hateful resonance of the axe. " Woodman, spare that tree ! " must be our slogan, as it was of Virgil and, long after bim, of Allan Quartermain.

May it prove effectual!

One used to rather enjoy the sight of the hoi-polloi out for day's joy-ride in the country, for the vapid smile and airy hand-wave were at the least cheery.

Then one did not detect the sloven inwardness that chucks lighted matches athwart dry grass, and strews unsightly papers and bottles along the King's Highway. Just because it is the King's Highway, no penalty can be inflicted, we believe. The sole feasible measure is to enlist every Institute in every village to impress the corps of Boy Scouts, who notes the motor's number and reports such filthy practices, worse than spitting on the carpet because more obvious, to both that motor's proprietor and the powers that be —for the sake, indeed, of King and Country. a

POLLUTION OF T H E R I V E R

GIPPING.

The Gipping flood that rose in the higher lands of Mendlesham Green and, swollen by other floods from Old Newton, Harleston and the Orwell stream from Rattlesden, rushed down the gradient through the town of Stowmarket and many a riparian hamlet to join the estuary at Ipswich, was the main drainage of south-east Suffolk so late as Saxon times.

Later, when its banks had eroded nearly to that estuary's level, it settled down to the sort of tranquil quietude, gently meandering through willow-lined cattle-marshes, basking verdant below the summer sun in contrast to the sandy soil and sombre pines of its shelving shores, that is so typical of English landscape scenery.

Here wild life ran rampant, Elephant-hawk moths flitted at dusk, and flocks of wild-fowl found harbourage from winter's blast.

Mediseval Suffolk was prominent as a Textile County, which industry deserted us for the North as soon as coal became essential for Output ! but now, when electricity is become the driving force, King Coal and his northern rule loose grip and textile manufactory returns to the great open spaces from overcrowded Midland centres of commerce. Hence an extensive Artificial Silk works was planted about 1926 in Stowmarket and there at once began to produce, not only such silk but, effluent chemicals that gradually came to pollute the fair Vale of Gipping throughout no less than sixteen miles of its length.

A Member of our Society noticed in May, 1928, that its fish in general were growing sickly and a few already killed ; three days later other dead ones from Baylham were passed to the county medical officcr of health, Dr. Wood-White, who reported the occurrence to both his Council and the

EDITORIAL.

69

Ministry of Health.

Düring July, TEN FÜLL TONS of slain fish and eels were transferred from the River to the public destructor, along with innumerable newts, frogs, toads, rats, mice and voles : in short, every form of Life down to the very Vegetation such as duckweeds and Algae ceased to exist.

Caidis-fly larvae and water-snails were extirpated ; water- lily roots, grown thick as a man's arm with age, rotted away. Cattle and pigs suffered badly, every wild-fowl deserted the district, and farm ducks avoided even the surface of so deadly a death-trap.

For the water turned to inky-black, a reeking mass of H2 S , so densely charged that the very paint of water-mills became discoloured by its oxide of lead.

With Doratic dilatoriness no action was taken by ordained authorities, tili the Needham Market parish council's Chairman passed a Public Protest, demanding due enquiry into this nuisance set up by the British Acetate Silk works at Stowmarket. Riparian miliers and farmers, lacking all water-supply, brought actions against that works ; and, after persistent procrastination, a Perpetual Injunction with füll costs at length issued in October, 1929, to restrain defendants. Thus pollution has already ended, indeed; and the water again is normal, thanks be ! But years must elapse ere the woeful waste of vegetable and animal life can resume its placid course in the upper reaches of our erstwhile beautiful River.

A Gipping Board should be set up to maintain the Rivers health, since no existing authority quite Covers the ground : most certainly its Chairman should be Mr. Edward W. Platten, F.R.H.S., but for whose timely vigilance it is not too much to expect that all Ipswich would have become oxidised.

OBSERVATIONS.

Regions motors never knew, Thy propensities explore : Things that " Dora" may eschew, Rest to you as 'twas of yore.

MINERALOGY.—In pursuance of this Society's fourth Object, the Hon. See. has enlightened the public through the Channel of the local Press upon several subjects there mooted during the past year. Among others, " what is thought to be a fossil of a turtle, found embedded at the depth of about six feet in yellow clay, during excavations on boggy land at Great Bealings," was explained as consisting totally of clay through which ramificate veins of fossilised " water."

The boulderclay at this point, a few hundred yards due north of the church, borders easterly upon the glacial-gravel Valley of the Otley stream to its southern junetion with the Fyn River, and the

70

EDITORIAL.

umps unearthed have a peculiarly smooth surface that resembles a turtle's shfell. Through this clay had percolated in more or less regularly criss-cross ridges water which, being thickly charged with sulphate of lime, has left a deposit of selenite.

The latter, a beautiful semi-transparent variety of gypsum not unlike tortoise-shell, is always of a pale primrose •colour, well known in Suffolk under the colloquial name of " congealed water."

It differs slightly from the equally common calcites, which are carbonate of lime and of which we possess a subcircular specimen four inches in diameter from Bedfield.

This was doubtless derived from chalk in High Suffolk boulder-clay, since calcium or calcareous spar is a porous deposit in limestone streams.

A very large specimen, similar to the Bealings one and weighing forty-five pounds, was subsequently reported to the Society as having lain for many years in a rockery at Dedham upon our south border.

It is thought, by Mr. F. S. Griffiths there, to have been transported from the late Professor Henslow's collection at Hitcham.

In the Technical Institute Hall at Sudbury is a small and interesting collection of Minerals.

CRUSTACEA.—The interesting marine woodlouse (Ligia oceanica), previously noticed in Suffolk only along the bank of the River Waveney under Burgh Castle, occurred abundantly beside the River Blyth at Walberswick ferry in September.

Many Crabs and less common kinds of Shrimps were dredged from the sea-bottom off Southwold and Dunwich in the course of the same month ; the material accumulated will go to extend the local catalogue of these animals.

CCELENTERATA.-—Upon the same occasions, examples of the large Jelly-fish (Chrysaora isosceles, Linn.) were taken in the trawl, along with the small Pleurobrachia pileus, Flem., thought

by Dr. Sorby to have become scarce in the Stour and Orwell estuaries. Also a very few Sea-anemones.

ECHINODERMATA.—The ease with which new kinds are added to Suff olk is shown by the occurrence in the same trawl of a beautiful example of the Sea-urchin (Echinocardium cordatum) that is so well figured by Furneau in 1903, plate iv, figure 4.

Star-fish, Brittle-stars and the common Urchin (Echinus miliaris) were taken at the same time.

MOLLUSCA.-—The usually trying springs of East Anglia are rarely so dry and sunny as our last one, with the result that Crag Shells were in a much more workable condition than is normally the case when covered with water and mud from winters denudation. Some of our Members made interesting discoveries

EDITORIAL.

71

among these fossils at the end of March along the cliff at Bawdsey, as well as in the out-crops of Colneys Hundred at Levington, Foxhall, Newbourn, etc.

The entire wall of unadulterated Molluscs at the last locality is a very remarkable sight and one not soon forgotten by any ardent conchologist.

Among dredgings calamary abundant

the Cephalopoda or cuttle-fish, the above Southwold brought up the elongate Loligo vulgaris or common and the curious little Sepiola Atlantica which is the squid recorded in 1911 by Dr. Sorby.

In the Technical Institute Hall at Sudbury is a restricted but interesting collection of exotic marine Shells.

ARACHNIDA.—Early in October the Rev. Chris. Greaves noticed parasites attached to flies in a Framlingham grocer's shop where the latter were in unusual abundance. A specimen secured later was a male of the common House Fly (Musca domestica, Linn.), to which were clinging two specimens of the False-scorpion seu Chelifer, Chernes nodosus, Sehr., described in the Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge's 1892 Monograph on the British Chernetidea, in Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. Soc. xiii, 225, pl. C, fig. 16.

Though known, in no Situation but clinging to unidentified " flies," in Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Herts, Yorks and Cumberland, the Chelifer has never been noticed in Suffolk before. In the present case, one of the specimens had relaxed its hold and was already moribund when reeeived ; but the other remained attached to the fly, though by nothing but its left forceps—these interesting claws are curiously similar to those of crabs—and that with such muscular force as to flatten the base of the fly's hind femur, while the palpal muscles above the forceps were strong enough to retain the entire Chelifer, with the rest of its limbs retracted and inert, extended in a horizontal position that no efforts of the fly could dislodge.

Tobacco-smoke,however, caused immediate voluntaryseverance.

Several kinds of apterous Beetles are known to employ winged insects for the purpose of their eggs' dispersal; likely the association between our Fly and Chelifer is no more intimate.

ENTOMOLOGY.—On a small lucerne field of less than an acre in Framlingham, we have had the good fortune to capture nineteen beautiful and freshly emerged males and females of the Pale Clouded-yellow Butterflies (Cottas Hyale).

A friend also took three, thus making twenty-two in all.

We have been over practically every clover and lucerne field in the district ; but, beyond one male Clouded-yellow (C. Edusa) on 25th August on lucerne at Wickham Market, there is not a sign of either butterfly visible.

Twelve specimens were taken on 20th August, four on 21st, two on 25th and one on 26th. We have

72

EDITORIAL.

also taken one or two very beautiful and unusually brilliantly blue females of the Blue Butterfly (Lyccena Icarus) ; Brimstones (Gonepteryx rhamni) and Peacocks (Vanessa Io), both commonly; and a few Red Admirals ( V . Atalanta), but with no sign of Painted Ladies ( V . cardui).—T. E . CARLEY. After the unusual prevalence of these Clouded-yellows during 1928 throughout Suffolk with their headquarters around Bury which they appeared to reach from the Continent by way of the Deben estuary where Mr. Waller noticed a goodly number, it is indeed curious to find that Mr. Carley's above record is the sole Observation upon them effected by anybody in our County this year ; the President and we ourseif have been out and about both summer and autumn without catching a glimpse of one anywhere.

Whereas last year actually hundreds were recorded from Felixstow to Worlington, and from Gorleston sparingly adown the coast and inland to Hawkdon : as was fully noted in the local Paper of 17th October, and 5th, 14th, 16th and 28th November.

At the same time, Mr. Norton B. Garrard told us, they were abundant about both Yarmouth and Norwich.

FLUCTUATION OF SPECIES' RARITY.—It is gratifying to hear that Bishop Whittingham has taken two specimens of the Pine Hawk Moth (Sphinx pinastri) this year," somewhere in " the eastern part of Suffolk. This large insect was found here in some numbers before 1886, after which year there are very few notices of it until 1917.

However, since that time it has turned up annually and is obviously upon the increase in and near its sole habitat in Britain, where it was first reared in 1877.

The Large Tortoiseshell (Vanessa polychloros) has occurred this year to MM. Harwood, Platten and ourseif a good deal more freely than for the past score of years, despite The Times' letter of 5th September from Dr. Whittingham, who considers t h a t " insects which have become extinct within living memory or within the scope of our records [and this begins with Moufet's ' Theatrum,' published during 1634] owed their extermination to building and increased cultivation most of all, the draining of the fen in the case of the Large Copper [Chrysophanus dispar] and some other fen insects ; fire, as in the case of the Suffolk Fidonia limbata ; or it may be from an unknown natural cause which appears to have had a considerable effect on the Large Tortoiseshell, and has been responsible for the western movement of the Comma [Polygonia c-album], which used to occur in the Midlands but is now only found in the West."

The last is rapidly spreading in the South also, for fully two hundred examples were captured and many more seen in the New Forest during the present year. It has not been observed in Suffolk

EDITORIAL.

73

since we saw a specimen on 19th September 1892, at Ipswich, near the south bank of the River Gipping.

This autumn some 120,000 chrysalides of Euchelia Jacobcece, Linn., were sent to the New Zealand government from the Breck of Suffolk by its collector, Mr. Carr of Lichfield.

ICHTHYOLOGY.—A " royal Sturgeon [Acipenser sturio, Linn.] was landed at Lowestoft on Wednesday by the local steam-trawler Ostrich.

This weighed sixteen stone, and was bought by Arthur Evans Fisheries Ltd." (LocalPaper, 17thMay 1929). " A royal Sturgeon, weighing about four stone, was landed at Lowestoft on the 7th by the local steam-trawler Encore, and was bought t by the Mayor" (loc. cit., 9th August 1929). Records of this fish are rare with us ; it has occurred in Brevdon Water, in the Yare and one was stranded a Century ago in the Aide at Rendham.

Another, taken off our coast, weighed only 156 lb. though over twelve feet in length. " A yellow Eel [presumably Anguilla vulgaris, Turt., var.] about a foot long, was taken in 1875 in the Waveney near Colonel Leathes' dyke, and was sent to the Fish Museum at South Kensington.

A white Shark [? Selache maxima, Gmel., var.] was also caught off Kessingland, weighing about a ton and having eight formidable rows of teeth " (Palmer, Perl.

Yarmouth iii, 1875, 404).

Such interesting notes, issued in a purely antiquarian publication, are apt to be ignored.

Another of the subjects mooted in the local Press during the year has been the extent of virulence of Weever-fishes' stings.

To this the Society replied that, while the spines of the dorsal fin of Trachinus vifiera are sometimes inoculous, the opercular spine is always venomous and the extent of its wound in direct ratio to the amount of poison transmitted in proportion to the victim's condition at the time of reception.

The species is only too commonly taken in shrimp-nets along the entire Suffolk coast. The Greater Weever (T. Draco, Linn. ; loc. cit., 19th October, 1929), another abundant species though rare in our inshore waters, stings from a gland at the base of a spike on each gill.

This fellow hurts abominably ; and Mrs. L. Mills of West Mersea in Essex teils us (in lit. 23 x 29) that her son carried his arm in a sling tili Saturday as the result of attack on Monday by one sixteen inches in length and seventeen ounces in weight.

THE SUN-FISH.—Though not strictly British at all, one of the latest catches of the season has been a Plectognathous Sun-Fish (Orthagoriscus mola, Linn.).

This was taken on 2nd November off Smiths-knoll, which is twenty miles from Lowestoft, into which port it was brought by the local trawler Glenroy.

The specimen weighed 26J pounds and was 25 £ inches long by eighteen high, though no less than thirty-six

74

EDITORIAL.

high including the dorsal and ventral fins. The sole three examples previously recorded in the Suffolk list are from Yarmouth in 1662 (Sir Thomas Browne), 1835 and the latest in 1843 (Paget and The Zoologist). The species is subtropical, and unnoticed by Patterson ; it has a tough and rongh skin, the scales of which can be elevated at pleasure, and the little mouth is adapted only for the reception of the smaller Crustacea.

This Sun-Fish was subsequently exhibited by Mr. J . Leggett of Blythburghgate in Beccles. ^ ORNITHOLOGY.—A Pelican (four kinds are in the Zool.

Society's gardens ; this one is presumably of the common white Syrian species, Pelicanus onocrotalus) caused a figurative flutter in the local Press during July last, fte seems to have traversed Essex without being observed anywhere, after escaping from St. James' Park in London, until he was noticed on the Deben near Woodbridge ; thence his course appears to have been due north, via Orford and Iken, where he allowed himself to be quietly sketched upon the flats on the 21st, to Aldeburgh.

Yet further north, he alighted in the roadway at the Knapton end of Water Lane in Mundesley about 8.15 one evening.

But again winged it to the trees of the Rookery grounds there, upon being approached ; and no one succeeded in seizing him by the bill with one arm and encircling his body with the other or subsequently feeding him entirely on fish, the approved mode of procedure.

We fear some Norfolk gunner later more likely filled him with lead, but no upshot emerges. " Two Spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia, Linn.) were observed on the River Blyth above Walberswick in September, one with a broken leg " (Major Cooper). '* I saw a black Redstart (Ruticilla phcenicurus, Linn. ; locally called Fire-tail) on 5th October in one of my fields at Fiatford " in Fast Bergholt (Leonard Richardson).

In the Public Librarv at Lowestoft are several cases of Stuffed Suffolk birds.

B I R D R E S E R V E S AND CRUELTY.—Just now folk are really beginning to realise that our feathered friends, if not those Insects they prey upon so unmercifully, need active succour : after rudely disturbing their " ancient solitary reign" by progressive farming and forest-felling, we are surprised the birds desert us !

We ourseif have not scoured the entire County in quest of Nature Sanctuaries, but no doubt can exist that such are conspicuously absent from our midst; and the Royal Society for Bird Protection seems able to appropriate to the purpose nothing better than the Sudbourne Beach, southward from its junction with Aldeburgh at Slaughden. This is likely one of the futilest spots in broad Britain for any such purpose, on account of the bombing Station upon it. When

EDITORIAL.

75

there last May, not a bird of any sort was visible to us. This matter must" be seriously looked into. Meanwhile, inland much can be achieved where most convenient to ourselves in farming districts, for the wholesale felling of timber no more than drives wild Nature elsewhere; all needed to fill a Bird Sanctuary with life, is to uglify the surrounding district by utter desolation of trees and hedges for a sufficient circuit, as is fast being done in such villages as Bedingfield, Kenton and a good many more upon the boulder-clay of High Suffolk.

The lower-class oppidan is our worst offender against protection. " Bird Notes & News " of June last recounts numerous prosecutions, each resulting in severe fines along with the confiscation of nets, traps, cages and all such paraphanalia of too restricted confinement ; in one case the first amounted to two pounds for snaring Goldfinches, and in another to five for using braced birds and possessing a Goldfinch upon the person.

A great deal of such traffic is well known in Norfolk ; little but our superficial ignorance veils as much in Suffolk, but out in our really rural districts we do not believe the game thought worth the candle. Because it obtains mainly around towns, a Sanctuary should exist there too.

Ipswich is likely the worst of our particular offenders ; and beside Ipswich the fine Chantry Park should most certainly be given over to all the birds that may resort thither, as far as is now possible and comprehensively when the small percentage of land still leased comes in. The ill-advised ultra-publicity of Christchurch Park is abundantly emphasised by its desertion by the majority of those birds that bred there in the time of Thomas Neale Fonnereau esquire. Then the Nightjar, fern-owl or locally nightreel (Cafirimulgus Europceus, Linn.), now absent for at least six years, regularly nested there ; it abounds around Brandon and" Staverton, and is generally distributed throughout our delightsome heathlands in both east and west. We shall be very pleased to communicate with anybody inclined to Naturereserve his estate.

Are those really Suffolk farmers, whom we hear replying ?

ABNORMAL NUMBER OF TAIL FEATHERS.—The t a i l f e a t h e r s

of birds are normally invariably even in number, and I believe there are anatomical reasons why this must be so.

Twelve is far the most usual number; but the late Fergus Menteith Ogilvie refers to a common Snipe (Gallinago ccelestis, Fren.) with sixteen tail feathers, instead of the normal fourteen.

I have come across five birds with an abnormal number of such feathers, but in these cases it has always been one above the normal.

Am I to assume that in each of them the bird had moulted, or otherwise lost, the other extra feather ?

Or is it possible that it never produced two extra tail feathers ?

76

EDITORIAL.

The birds were a Woodpigeon (Columba palumbus, Linn.), a spotted Crake (Porzana maruetta, Lch), an immature Herring Gull (Lants argentatus, GmeL), a little Auk (Mergulus Alle, Linn.) and a Puffin (Fratercula arctica, Linn.).

The Puffin had seventeen tail feathers instead of sixteen, and all the rest had thirteen instead of twelve.—C. G. DOUGHTY. REPTILES.—The indigenous paucity of our single Lizard (Lacerta vivipara, Jacq.) was curiously exaggerated bv the ignorance of it, displayed by correspondents to the local Press last September.

A Naturalist then made his first Suffolk Observation among Gorse growing upon Rushmere heath, and another noted one in his house at that village, near Ipswich ; a lady of Needham Market recorded one upon Minsmere heath in Dunwich some time ago ; and Interested had seen the species both beside the Sproughton Road, and during 1926-28 upon a bank below Alexandra Park, in Ipswich.

We ourseif indicated Southwold, Foxhall and a broad distribution, showing that such Lizards were as prevalent throughout the less frequented patches of the County as was the case thirty years ago.

The latest observed occurred at Bell Hill (which is not a Tumulus, as indicated by the Ordnance survey, but a cut-through hill-spur of glacial gravel) in Fritton.

MAMMALS. —Although it is generally regarded as a common species with us, we personally have quite failed to make acquaintance with Long-eared Bats (Plecotus auritus, Linn.) until one was found dead indoors at Onehouse village last August; we owe the specimen to Miss Grace Watson, and the skin is now drying.

On the other hand the Common Bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Sch.) abounds everywhere, and sometimes has to be ejected from our house at Monks' Soham.

Here it is mentioned solely on account of its occurrence in Denston church on 16th October, for records of all our animals are horribly sparse from the south-west of the County. More centrally in the west, skeletons of both the Beaver (doubtless the modern Castor fiber, and not the red-crag C. veterior) and Red Deer (Cervus elephas, Linn., also found fossilised) were dug out of the peat in the course of draining at West Row in Mildenhall last spring, as Mr. Brown of that town informs us.

Upon an extensive collection of the latter's bones, recently taken from valley-gravel in the bed of the Deben River's affluant at Earls' Soham, we expect to say something in Part ii. of these " Transactions."

Small attention appears to have been paid hitherto respecting the local distribution of the Black Rabbits (Lepus cuniculus, Linn., var. niger) ; structurally they differ in no way from the usual grey form, but upon the warren their colour stands out conspicuously against the pale environment, suggesting a curious challenge to inimical attack.

Several examples of

EDITORIAL.

77

this variety were noted at Brandonroad heath on the Breck at the end of last August, but therearound we consider this form distinctly less frequent than it was thirty years ago.

No remembrance of it in the east of the County jumps to mind ; and we were glad to obtain in September Major Cooper's assurance that it does, or very lately did, occur upon the Blythburgh heathlands.

Alongside such Rabbits in the north-west, Roe Deer (Capreolus caftrea, Bell) survive in the wild state, as we pointed out to the local Press last April.

There, in the vicinity of Owe Hill, in the most boggy and inaccessible part of the Pens, we had the very great pleasure of seeing for the first time in our life—as few folks have seen— a truly wild Stag in East Anglia, on the last day of May, 1929.

It was a small hart with good antlers, and was extremely shy.

Long life, and a merry one, to him and his kind !

The sole addition we can make at present to the forty-three species of Suffolk mammals is the Grey Squirrel [Sciurus einereus), which is become quite at home in a place near Eye that shall be nameless here.

This fascinating little fellow has not long been introduced into England ; but he has spread rapidly and, unlike other counties' experiences, seems here to live amicably with our British Red Squirrel (leueorus, Kerr.).

I fear the latter has long deserted Christchurch Park in Ipswich (cf. The Field, 22nd November, 1902), and a quarter of a Century ago our gardener had the impudence to shoot the only one seen in our Monks' Soham garden ; but in better timbered distiicts it abounds, and we have a fine series of the Squirrel's exclusive flea (Pulex Sciurorum, Bche), taken froro their dreys in this County.

FOSSIL PACHYDERMS.—Quite recently the nippled tooth of a Mastodon (presumably Mastodon Arvernensis) was dug from the glacial-gravel of the Stour Valley at Cläre, where it is preserved in Col. R. C. Bond's garden. The later ' portion of Elephas antiquus tusk, twenty-seven inches long, found eight feet deep in river gravel, with no other remains' during 1924, is recorded from Thorndon (Suff. Inst. 1925, p. 253); the discoverer indicated to us a glacial-gravel pit, just below Braiseworth church and alongside the River Dove, as the site. Interest in both these cases arises from the fact that the Straight-tusked Elephant's incisor (molar-teeth alone are hitherto recorded with us), and the Mastodon's tooth, had been obviously washed out of the older Crag-beds, the latter perhaps twice.

Such teeth seem confined, excepting the Pliocene cave near Buxton, to the south-eastern counties.

Further, we may here notice a hitherto unrecorded and very beautifully enamelled tooth of the double-horned Rhinoceros Schleiermachen, which we found lying upon the surface of Red-crag during 1895 in the Foxhall pit that was excavated as

78

EDITORIAL.

exemplifying the Suffolk nodule-beds to the British Association that year.

It is of brilliant golden-green, and nearly l f inches broad by rather over an inch in height; and (sec. Lyell's " Elements," 133) a penultimate molar from the right side jaw, washed during Pliocene times from the earlier Eocene London-clay.

The association, possibly even continuity, of the Foxhall strata with those of the Continent has not yet been adequately recognised.

CF.TACEANS.—Whales were excluded from our fauna by Mr. Rope "in his 1911 account of Suffolk animals, presumably because they are mere visitants nowadays ; that they have been, like the poor, ever with us is abundantly proved, however, by the frequency with which their bones are unearthed from the red-crag, particularly at Bawdsey, where we found them strewn upon the shore this year. Whales' ribs are not objects to be hidden under a bushel, and ten years ago we were amazed to see a pair of them doing duty for a porch in front of a cottage in the main street of Great Thurlow, not far from the Stour River's source : these were not fossilised. We have the word of Abbo Florensis that in the year 985 this was a swift-flowing stream, but that Whales could negotiate it to such a height would seem, even so, vastly improbable.

However that may be, we do know, what Mr. Rope overlooked, that since Elizabeths reign five Whales (presumably the Southern Right-whale : Balcena) have occurred in the Orwell, some of whose bones were for so long exposed to the elements at Ipswich museum, with others from Sir Richard W'allace, presumably stranded at Orford.

Also, during her reign, a " herd " of Grampus (Orca gladiator, Lac.), now extremely rare off Lowestoft, made its second visit to Ipswich haven (Wodderspoon, p. 219).

And in 1543 a Porpoise (Phoccsna communis, Cuv.), always common off our coast, was " f o u n d " beneath Faybury and False Cliffs in the Orwell (Bacon's Annais of Ipsw., p. 222) ; one wonders if it were then considered edible, since this one was valued at a mark.

We trust that, by the end of next year, our several Sectional Recorders and Local Secretaries will have become sufficiently systematised to take these " Observations " off the Editor's hands, and give us a far more detailed and comprehensive account of the year's discoveries.

Sight must not be lost, however, of the fact that the very great majority of these gentlemen's divisional notices will be upon objects best presented, not in the above heterogeneous form but, in detailed Catalogues of the Minerals, Plants and Animals of the County in scientific sequence, as each approaches near enough to perfection to vindicate publication.

Their more general Reports should be in our hands by 15th October each year, in order to assure presentation in due form at the Annual Meeting.