264
NEWS FOR NA1URALISTS.
NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. Odds and ends ' Transactions ' gain By picking every Member's brain.
WITII great satisfaction we have to record the election of M r . J. Reid Moir to the Royal Society. T h e labours of this indefatigable worker have been various, persistent and bravely carried out in the face of considerable scepticism, born no doubt of scientific caution but sometimes over-slow to appreciate evidence. T o his imaginative insight and patient work our knowledge of very Early M a n is primarily due : the science of prehistory is greatly in his debt. In 1910 he first published an account of the subCrag implements of Suffolk, when the implication that M a n was flourishing in Pliocene time caused no little flutter in the archaeological dovecots. Similar papers and some books followed, the former in 1914 and 1920. In 1935 he f o u n d the pre-Crag artefacts to be of five different epochs, or at any rate cultures. H e also showed that there were intermediate stages which link these early cultures to those m u c h later which have long been known. Meanwhile he had devoted time to other but cognate subjects. A paper on experiments in the fracture of flint appeared in 1911. Later by geological discoveries he showed the earliest palaeolithic deposits to be m u c h earlier than had been thought. His well known find of Chellian artefacts in the C r o m e r Forest Bed at Cromer led to more papers. H e bas done i m p o r t a n t work too in the U p p e r Palseolithic : as in the Ipswich district and at Hoxne. Outside prehistory he latelv supervised the excavation at Ipswich of the apparently bottomless burial pits of Roman age. M r . M o i r has been a m e m b e r of T h e Suffolk Naturalist's Society for some years. W e offer him our h e a r t i e s t congratulations.—FRANCIS ENGLEHEART.
" THE willow pest, Hyponomeuta rorella, is as troublesome at Beccles as last year, and additional trees are attacked. It is noticeable that the vicinity of the River Waveney is again especially favoured by the caterpillars' webs " our M e m b e r , M r . Goldsmith, told us on 20 J u n e 1937 ; a n d within ten days not onlv the local newspapers but the L o n d o n journals were making good copy out of the invasion : this Society's Microlepidoptera Recorder printed an excellent account of the M o t h on 1 July. Ensued a s u d d e n hiatus : on 10 July we read that ' war has been declared on t h e Caterpillar Plague ; a Cheshire laboratory has come to the battlefield and on 9th commenced spraying, with a spray
NEWS FOR
NATURALISTS.
265
guaranteeing complete elimination of the pest in at most fifteen days.' Did it also eliminate public interest in the subject ? No more is heard tili your Hon. Secretary announced on 12 August that the Moth's distribution had extended eastwards to Fritton, where it had been discovered four days earlier on willow. Tyros might believe our prediction (Trans, iii, 118) thus falsified ; but the Director of the ministry of agriculture's Pathological Laboratory very truly points out that the Ichneumon parasite is doing its insidious work and will ' destrov all larvje in three or four years.' Further, we now know (Entöm. 1937, 211) these larvae to be more heavily parasitised than was at first suspected ; and that, besides the main Herpestomus, there are attacking them both a second Icheumon called Angitia armillata, Gr. and the Chalcid Ageniaspis fuscicollis, Dalm. (Cat. Chal. Brit. 21). How sepulchral appear the shrouds with which the caterpillars envelope trees is well shown in annexed plate, sent by our Original Member Mr. Platten. Small doubt can be entert'ained that the species flew to Beccles across the North Sea, for it has been known about Rotterdam, 150 miles away, since 1829 and Stainton anticipated ( E M M . 1883, 137) its occurrence thence in our eastern counties. Its small size is no deterrence to such a passage in windless weather: several specimens were actually taken while Aying, between midnight and 2 a.m. on the calm and foggy night of 6th, and there was a flight of them from midnight to 3 a.m. on the warm night of 9th, August last at the Outer Dowsing Lightship. THAT inveterate and loquacious migrationist, Captain Dannr^uther, seems to intend East Anglia when he writes ' Norfolk' records in T h e En.omologist of 1937, page 108, where are named five abundant Lepidoptera from Gorleston, Somerlevton, Corton, Wangford and even ' Brandon, W. Norfolk ' !—a mixed pie of no value.
WE have recently had the pleasure of receiving a complimentary copy of the extremely useful ' Plymouth Marine Fauna ' from our old friend Stanley Kemp, D.Sc., F . R . S . , who used to be a bug-hunter thirty years ago and has now blossomed forth as Director of the Marine Biological Association's laboratory there. It enumerates in nearly four hundred pages the whole of the Animals found off that coast—Protozoa, Porifera, Coelenterata, Annehda, Rotifera, Arthropoda, Mollusca, Echinodermata, Tunicata and Vertebrata, in that order—and is most useful for all sea work. Crustacea, now considered a class of Arthropoda of equal dignity with Insecta and Arachnida, is well represented ; tili the publication of Prof. Westwood's 1839 ' Introduction to Modern Classification' of Insects, Crustacea was considered a mere branch of Entomology. At the present time the very numerous species of Crustacea are Coming to be well known, though we are only beginning to appreciate them in Suffolk
266
NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.
(cf. Trans, ii, p. 265). Indeed, a good many detailed experiments are being carried out upon individual kinds and the Proc. Zoological Society this year contain papers on 'relative growth in Asellus aquaticus,' a fresh-water shrimp that is common in our brooks ; ' the effect of diet on the rate of reproduction of Gammarus,' another such shrimp ; ' acceleration of growth on the Growth-gradient in Carcinus msenas,' the common Harbour Crab ; ' differential growth in the Crab Ocypoda ' ; and Dr. Robert Gurney ' on some Crustacea from the Red Sea,' &c. In this Class our Society is lagging. ON 3 November last ' a collection of insects, taken between the Tower of London and the M o n u m e n t ' during the last twelve vears, was exhibited before the Entomological Society. A similar one from between Barrack Corner and Majors Corner in Ipswich would be of similar interest: the first Sealavender-feeder Plumemoths ever found in Suffolk came to Fräsers' electric-light, in 1895, though still known on their pabulum no nearer than Hemley beside the Deben River. SNAKES do not commend themselves to the occidental palate ; but in Tokyo a thousand are consumed every day. At least one shop maintains a large stock, in order to furnish the retail trade. Such wholesale slaughter is thinning the reptiles throughout Japan, excepting in the southern isles of Kyushu and Shikoku. And so general are they among the people that an actor on his stage, and upon one occasion even a Speaker in the Diet Chamber, have been pelted with them. T h e above 'Snake House' shop (says the Observer of 8 August last) keeps for patrons other animals in a baked form : Dragonflies, Snails, Goldfish, Frogs, Sala manders, Larks, C r a n e s ' heads, Squirrels, Weasels, Foxes' tongues and the heads of Monkeys.
As confirming and moreexactly datingwhatislocally remembered ^cf supra, pp. 6-8) of him, it may be quoted that " T h e Rev. Albert Henry Wratislaw died at Graythwaits, Southsea, on 3 November 1892,'aged seventy years. Educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, Mr. Wratislaw graduated third classic and a senior optime in 1844. He was a fellow and tutor of his College, and was appointed Head Master of Felstead School in 1852, and of King Edward the Sixth's School, Bury St Edmunds, in 1855. T h e latter position he held with distinction until 1879, when he retired. From 1879 until 1887 he resided in Pembrokeshire, where he held the College living of Manorbier. Mr. Wratislaw studied both Lepidoptera and Coleoptera, but he was probablty best known to entomologists as the first to detect, or perhaps it would be more correct to say rediscover, Dianthaecia irregularis (echii) in this country. He was not a frequent writer on entomological subjects, but he contributed several notes to both the Ent. Month. Mag.
NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.
267
and Entomologist; his ' Reminiscences of Entomology in Suffolk ' [Trans, supra ii, 66] attracted the attention of lepidopterists to the district around Tuddenham St. Mary in that county. Some four or five years ago his sight failed, and his valuable collection passed into the possession of Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson " (Entom. xxv, 328). Most or all of Wratislaw's Suffolk captures are vet extant : at Hodgkinson's death, about 1900, at least the Hymenoptera were acquired by Arthur Chitty,M.A.,F.E.S.,whobequeathed them to Oxford Museum where they found a permanent home in February 1908. A RECENT letter from Poland teils us that the Forest of Bialowieza, the sole remaining home of the great Auroch (Bos taurus, L., var. primigenius, Boj., that used to be wild in Suffolk), consists of no less than three hundred thousand acres of entirely virgin pines, lying midway between Warsaw and the Russian frontier: there, too, are Elk and Lynx. Since the German War the existant five or six hundred, exactly 491 in 1892, head of Auroch have been reduced to little more than fiftv individuals, a number bordering perilously close upon extinction in so Wolf-ridden a district. Hence we are delighted to hear that this slender remnant of a great race, supposed to have ' first roamed these glades in vast herds in the young days of the world,' is now rigidly protected by the Polish Govt. in the Forest's densest region which is reserved as a National Park. We hope to hear ere long that these splendid fellows have mustard and bread ! WE are delighted to extend a cordial hand to the " Suffolk Aquarists ' and Pondkeepers' Association," the nascence of whose being took place last vvinter : certainly no better president could have been found than Dr. Dudley Collings. At one of their earlier gatherings in March, Dr. Evans lectured in Ipswich on the Air-bag or Swim-bladder of Cyprinoids, which carp were shown in detail upon the screen, with various dissections of this peculiar anatomical feature, the functions of which were fully described from recent experiments. Mr. Herbert Drake led the subsequent vote of thanks ; Mr. C. W. Shute occupied the chair. We trust the somewhat ambitious ' monthly ' meetings can be maintained. 1F the present borings for oil in England be successful, a lot of cash shall flow into somebody's pocket and yet another district will be dtspoiled of Natural Beauty. A paper, read before the Geological Society last March, shows that " seepages and rocks impregnated with oil or oil residues are numerous in the Carboniferous beds of Britain. Indications of oil and gas are also found in the Permian Magnesian Limestone of Durham. In southern England, sands of the Wealden group are locally richly irnpregnated with oil, as at Chilley near Pevensey in Sussex and
268
NEWS FOR
NATURALISTS.
at Worbarrow Bay, Mupe Bay, Lulworth Cove [save the Skipper ! ] and Dungy Head in Dorset. Oil residues occur in Purbeck limestones at various localities in Sussex and Dorset, and at Osmington Mills in Dorset a Corallian oil sand actually seeps free oil. Coal exploration borings in Sussex and Kent have Struck shows of oil at various Jurassic horizons. Closed anticlines in Carboniferous beds, which could retain oil accumulations, mav exist beneath the blanket of Permian and younger rocks east of the Derbyshire to south Yorkshire coalfields. Geophysical methods are being used in an attempt to disccver such structures," which we sincerely hope will fail to do so. Black Country is a sufficient blot on England's landscape, ' Greasy Ground ' would be far less readilv cleansible. No such violation of East Anglia is possible, thanks be ! Our Member Mr. Rait-Smith teils us that at Stevens' auetionrooms in Covent Garden last December, a Large Copper Butterflv " not too good female with the remarkable data ' Norfolk 1887 ' was sold at tvvo pounds " : and yet, our minister's wife asserts, scepticism is unfashionable ! Here, at least, everyone did not believe the data, for the usual sale price is fullv a fiver. Our Member Dr. Ennion of Burwell is very generally recognised as sharing in the first flight of those modern artists who have the knack of seizing Birds' peculiarly characteristic attitudes and idiosyncrasies. He contributes not only such sketches but explanatory text to the EAnglian Magazine, &c ; and last spring launched forth into a month's Exhibition of w ater-colour drawings of Duck and various other game-birds at the Greatorex Galleries in Grafton Street, W. Models from Iceland, Holland, Scotland and Cambs were upon private view during 14 April. But those that appealed most nearly to us are a delightful group of five studies from the Breck : The Shoveller on the Lark, the Gadwell of a mere, Cavenham Heath with its typical Stone Curlew and Barton Mills in SufFolk, were all exquisite. Our Member, Dr. F. Haselfoot Haines of Ringwood, considers that " as an explanation of Migration and other problems, reference may be made to Wegener's theorv of the movements of continents [Origin of Continents and Oceans : cf. Blair, Tr. S.B.E. ii, pt. 2J. It explains so manv biological facts (as well as the present distribution of land and sea, the past movements of the poles, the position of the great coalfields of the world and other conditions) that truth, in its main outlines, is likely. T h e remarkable coincidence in coastline along the epposite shores of the Atlantic, and identity of geological formations, led Wegener to his theory, which is : That the Earth, consisting as geologists largely agree of a lighter and more rigid crust on a heavier and more plastic substratum, was a level expanse under a uniform depth of water when it commenced to cool. T h e cooling caused contraction
NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.
269
of the rigid crust, raising up Ccntinents : great rifts appeared of which the first, along Wallace's line, became the bed of the Pacific. T-ater, in Cretaceous times, Europe and Africa were separated from America by further contraction and upheaval. The theory might explain problems like the apparently purposeless plunge of the Lemmings into the sea, as due to an o'ld instinct to migrate to some distant land no longer there ; and the reason that F.els spann in the western Atlantic, as their pursiung a retreating spawning-ground. T h e alteration of the position of the Equator and Poles may indicate the reason hy migratorv Birds, and the Insects that closely accompany them, choose their present routes across the Equator or to east and west. It is said that they still seek, by inherited impulses, old landing places that are now submerged, and beat about thereon until exhaustion and drowning end their lives. Perhaps the theory hardlv explains, as has been suggested, the distribution of the Tapirs, the Marsupiais, the common Mallophagid parasite of the Struthionid [Ostrich] birds, or the similarities between the Maya and Basque languages : facts surelv too recent to be affected by conditions obtaining in so remote a past. T h e fauna alluded to consists of old types, which were once widely spread but have died out in the intervening spaces of time. This is shown bv the fact that thzLung-fishes and the Marsupiais occurred in Europe and Asia during palseoraic times, as well as in south Africa and south America and Australia. T h e Tipulid [Dipterous] genus, Macromastix of Australia and New Zealand, is found also in the Oligocene of the Isle of W i g h t ; the Worm, Bimastus constrictus, occurs on Snse Fell as well as in subantarctic regions " (cf Proc Hants Field Club, xiii, 285). IN connection with the late Mr. Elliott's article in our Trans. ' on Zoological Classification ' and its just strictures to place of publication, there leaps to mind the name of Revd. J. G. Wood, the well-known writer of manv popular-science books in late Victorian times. He was the sole author, we hope, who ever erected new species in so ephemeral a journal as a newspaper, and that a provincia) one of Cambs. if memory serves aright. Our late friend Edward Saunders, F.R.S., told us that once his wife and he were calling upon Wood's family when, amidst their social chat, the Naturalist thrust his head in at the door and announced that " A Peso-machus has just vvalked across my study table : " it is not everyone who knows an Ichneumon of thts genus at sight—or pronounces the word in such a fashion ! ONE of our prominent Members and a man of no small aiscernment wrote in the local daily Press on 11 May last respecting the Uglification of Suffolk, that " t h e feet of the rtulistines have been stayed." Indeed, one would fain believe m m ; but it is more likely that the thoughtlessness, lust of speed
270
NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.
and greed of gain, which he so justly deplores, will continue to soil the face of our countryside tili the present half-education of the masses developes into some kind of nascent sestheticism with the succeeding generation. Upon that same morning Mr. Simpson wrote that practically half Howe Wood in Martlesham, and a fine avenue in Bromeswell, were felled with all their large oaks ; the similar fate of at least four hundred wonderful oaks and birches was imminent at Sudbourne, and the trees all marked for slaughter ; two boards, advertising woodland for sale, disfigured the road from Bealings to Martlesham ; and, most deplorable of all, further transformation of our great open speaces was taking place by the planting with ugly and almost useless conifers on the glorious heathland, where rare Birds are yet frequent, by the Forestry Commissioners : and this despite those Commissioners' assurance of December 1935 (Proc. ii, p. lxxi) that thev would " plant no further anywhere throughout East Suffolk." Such assurance (sie) sorely shreds one's patience. We are delighted to have Mrs. Ovey's contradiction of her Statement, made at our Meeting last December (Proc. p. exiv), that Ringshall woods were being felled : our lovely Govt. propose merely to desecrate the church by carrying pylon-wires Over i t ! As A. J. Munnings, R.A., truly asserted last June " the English do not deserve the country they dwell in." The necromantic New Forest was füll of interest to the Lepidopterist last spring ; and something very like a complete list of the indigenous Prominents came to a single light on the two nights of 2-3 May: no less than Curtula, Ziczac, Dromedarius, Chaonia, Dictaeoides, Tremula, Trepida and Fagi—whoever heard of the Lobster Moth so early ?—with Palpina, Camelina, three speeimens of Carmelita ; also a few passe Ridens and the Marbled Pug Irriguata. Moths were peculiarly scarce in Suffolk up to the hot 20 May : isolated speeimens of Nigrifasciaria, Trimacula and Trepida came to light, but not a single Macro was visible throughout the Thelnetham Woods on 17 of that montli. The same dearth was noted by our Member, Mr. Burton, around Bristol which showed little beyond Holly Blues and Orangetipped Butterflies. Our Suffolk annals should certainly perpetuate an intimate aneedote about the Ven. William Kirby of Barham, F.R.S., recounted by our late friend, C.W. Dale (Lep. Dorset. 1886, p. xiii). When near Lyndhurst " in the New Forest with the Rev. W. Kirby, my father saw a speeimen of the Lobster Moth, Stauropus fagi, and as he was going to box it Mr. Kirby said ' It's mine : I saw it first.' ' Take it,' replied my father. Soon afterwards, my father took a speeimen of [the handsome Daddylonglegs : cf. Trans, ii, p. clxxix] Ctenophora ornata: " Now, Dale, I
NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.
271
•exchange with you,' says Mr. Kirby. ' No,' retorts my father ; ' the Lobster I may take at some future day, but the Fly never ' and it remained unique as British from that day, which was 7 July 1821, to the 7 July 1881 when my friend the Rev. C. R. Digby pointed one out to me sitting on the trunk of an oak at Lyndhurst." The succeeding Century has proved J. C. Dale's preference to be sound. _No report is, for the present, to be issued upon our Breck District. But the Society's representative upon the Preservation of Rural England committee assures Members that all goes particularly well in the matter. Our Member Mr. Lingwood asks " who first began to preserve trophies of the fowler and angler, and which of them was first ? Probablv the art of stuffing fish is the earlier, for dried specimens were hung as signs by alchemists as early as Elizabethan times : Romeo, describing the premises of the Mantuan apothecary, says :— And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other sklns Of ill-shaped fishes . . .
Not until the seventeenth Century, apparently, did birds ' stuffed with aromatic powders ' begin to appear in England. The oldest bird extant in a public collection is, according to Prof. Newton, the Great Auk in Worms Museum at Copenhagen : mentioned in a published catalogue of 1655. Probably tbe earliest stuffed bird remaimng in this countrv is the Grey Parrot (presumably Psittacus enthracus from Africa) which lived with La Belle Stewart, Duchess ol Richmond, for forty years and is still to be seen beside her wax ln Westminster Abbey, where he was placed soon after her 1702 death. The museums of Eastern England possess venerable mounted bird-skins : the Lyre Bird at Ipswich, sent home from r 0 M»y B a y by Margaret Catchpole in 1807, sec. Rev. Richard V. obbold; Saffron Walden's bird-collection started in 1832 • and Castleford Museum at Chepstow has a Great Bustard killed on SwafFham Heath in Norfolk during 1830. Bvgone Bonifaces sometimes preserved in their bar-parlours exceptional examples ot bird and fish obtained in their neighbourhood ; it may be that the more obscure inns, which have hitherto escaped the drastic spnng-cleaning beloved of the brewery-firms, can boast cases at least as old as some of those mentioned above. Whv not •investigate ? " At once there leapt to mind that nice little collection hung on me walls of the foyer at the Wherry Inn by Oulton Broad, around Which sheet of water all are asserted to have been slain. The Jight is bad but, with a torch, we found five cases of Fish containing-
WF.B F O R M A T I O N BY CATERPILLAR WII.LOW
INFECTIMG
T R E E S AT BECCI.ES.
272
NEWS FOR NATURAL ISTS.
four Perch (Perca fluviatilis, L.) ; one Black Bass (Morone librax, L., labelled M. dolomica); one Golden Tench (Tinea vulgaris, Cuv.); two Roach (Leuciscus rutilus, L.) ; and two Bream (Abramis brama, L.) one a hybrid of 6f lb. and one of 2\ lb. that was taken from the Waveney at Somerleyton on 13 August 1881, which we should guess to be the about dat j of the collection in general. The sole Mamma! is a black-back Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris, Bk.). Many of the Birds were hung high and hard to distinguish, but we seemed to recognise : Long-tailed Tit, Bull Finch, Jay, Shore Lark, Snowv Owl, Sparrow Hawk, Kestrel, Bittern and a possible Little Bittern (Ardetta minuta, L.), Tufted and various other Ducks, Shoveler, Wood Pigeon, Ring Dove, Partridge, Coot, various Sandpipers and Terns, Razorbill and some Great-crested Grebes. Southwold Picture-theatre sports fine heads of three Indian Deer, three Buffalo, two Boar, a Brown Bear and Tiger.