News for Naturalists 4 Part 1

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NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. Relaxation is vexation, Setting is as bad ; Priority doth puzzle me, And Naming drives me mad !

THE ESKIMOS of

Baffin Land, too arctic to grow timber, built a church of the great rib and jaw bones of Whales (Balaena mysticetus, Linn.), with which their shore is strewn by whalingvessels, says Home Words last February. Over this frame-work of novel posts and rafters they stretched walls and roof of the skins of Caribou (Cervus tarandus). Many worshippers gathered from far on dedication day, drawn in their sledges by teams of numerous huskies, which dogs boast ravenous appetites.

With the result that, while the Eskimos later folded their hands in slumber, the huskies not only chewed every scrap of Reindeer-hide sheathing but scattered the gnawed Whale-bones to the four winds of heaven.

FOLK are still all to prone to regard Insects with a jocund or disgusted eye, though our Ministry of Agriculture could easily disilusion their perceptions. Nowhere are they more innocuous than at home, where for a Century injurious species of our ' halfstarved fragment' of the European Fauna have been mercilessly stamped out. In warmer climes, where individuals are both more numerous and of much larger size, their economic force is proportionately greater. It was reliably stated at the Science Congress in Calcutta last January that India's Insects are responsible for the loss of more human life and destruction of more vested interests than the whole historic wars, earthquakes, floods, fires and famine. Annually over a hundred million persons suffer, of whom more than one million die, from Malaria that is caused by Mosquito-punctures ; other pests cause five hundred thousand deaths. Insects that prey only upon indigenous Sugar-canes (Saccharum officinarum, L.) take toll of twentytwo and a half hundred thousand pounds and the Ox Warblefly (CEstrus bovis, DeG.) alone robs the Hide industry of well °ver a million : the whole Insects' Charge yearly amounting to a hundred andfiftymillions Sterling in our Indian Empire, where are estimated to exist fully two and a half million Insect-

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species, of which the life-histories of but forty thousand are known with any degree of precision. This ignorance is well exemplified by the countless undescribed parasitic Hymenoptera that an hour's sweeping, over herbage in even Ceylon, will produce.

SINCERE congratulations to the Ipswich and East Suffolk Beekeepers' Association, and to Mr. C. Buckland of Carr Street the Hon. Secretary, upon the outstanding success of their last show in that town on 24-5 August. Increasingly good work is being carried out by members in the ' aparies ' of the district embraced and, despite this most erratic season of recent years, the entries ran to over two hundred exhibitors. T h e most important ones were certainly wax, an excellent pale honey, and cross hive-sections. T h e principal judge, Mr. Herrod Hempsall, considered apiculture so fascinating that one interested never relinquished its pursuit tili overtaken by senility. No less may be said of all Entomology.

" I HA VE an idea that the fluctuation in numbers, and change of habitat, among some of our native Lepidoptera are due only to anno domini: by this I mean that it is merely the passing of the years which calls our attention to gradual alterations that have been going on ceaselessly throughout the ages. A hundred and forty years ago the Comma Butterfly was plentiful, as we learn from old writers on Entomology, in many of those places where it has recently reappeared, and so was the White Admiral: both these insects may well increase for a Century and more, then once again dwindle and apparently die out in a majority of their present haunts. Why such fluctuations should take place is a hard question to answer, and one upon which I do not care to speculate too deeply ; for, in spite of the claims of ' modern ' science (often an alias of self-satisfaction among the younger generation at our universities)weareappallingly ignorant of the forces that control Life on this planet. I believe in a general Law of Rhythm, which is recognisable not only in the revolution of the spheres outside our own universe, in the changes of the moon, the tides and the seasons, but in all things living, with their ebb-and-flow, that governs Life as inexorably as do Birth and Death. From the growth and metamorphoses of Insects to the Earth's orbit round the sun, what are these normal phenomena but manifestations of one great law ? And is not this the true meaning of our ' eternity ' ?

Time is no more than man's finite conception of a State that in reality knows nothing of time, simply because Rhythm, like a circle, has neither beginning nor end.—But to mention the word circle in this connection is misleading ; for Rhythm, as I see it, is more in the nature of pulsation. Often it is irregulär, even erratic, in so far as its ränge of influence, volume and direction are controlled by external forces; but it persistsinexorably

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returning to its normal scope, fullness and direction, whenever the external forces become relaxed. Imagine a motor-car endowed with perpetual motion, going round a certain course : strong gusts may slow it momentarily, so that it will rarely pass the same spot at exactly the same time each day, month or year; sometimes it will be on one side of the road, sometimes the other ; occasionally a river may flood across the road, delaying the car for an indefinite length of time . . . That is how I understand Cosmic Rhythm.

Mankind by himself has singularly small, if any, power to affect such Rhythm. Or, indeed, recks little of it : take the case of the Eggar-moth, Eriogaster lanestris, L. [Memoir 1937, p. 100] : sometimes it remains seven years in pupa ; but often, if a chrysalis be opened, the moth inside is found all ready to emerge : and it is known to lie, fully-formed but perdu so to speak, in its chrysalis for two, three or more years. A matter of temperature, aridity or humidity ? Not at all. Take some pupa;, in which the moths are all ready to emerge, and try to ' force ' them : you will not succeed in excluding a single imago until its proper time for emergence has arrived. What governs emergence we know not, and all the Fellows of the Royal Society cannot teil us. But if you allow Rhythm to enter into the conception of Natural Laws you have at least a logical reason (though it be an abtruse one) for Natural Phenomena.—With regard to those insects, such as the Pease-blossom Moth, Chariclea delphinii, L., which we have reason to believe inhabited England formerly and are now extinct, their disappearance may be similar in causation to, though far from cceval with, the passing of the Mammoth, Cave-tiger and the Auroch. On the other hand it is possible, as this particular Moth is, unlike the majority of such mammals, by no means extinct elsewhere, that Pease-blossom may revisit England when such conditions as are essential for its welfare, genial chmate and the presence of its foodplant, shall be restored.

That is how I account for Sibylla's modern expansion and Paphia's disappearance from its ancient haunts. I am much too old to have any conceit about my powers of correlation and deduction, so I throw out the suggestion for whatever it be worth "— P- B. M. Allan ; in lit. 6 February 1938.

SUCH a Rhythm Theory is entirely distinct from Macleay's Cycles ' (Ent. Mag. 1833) and Stephens' ' Cycles of Entomology ' that are detailed (EMM. 1875, p. 89) by Jolly Douglas, whose gloomy forecast has been so abundantly illumined ! But what of our extinct Noctua delphinii of Linna:us (S.N. ii, 857) for which Curtis erected the new genus Chariclea after a ' beautiful -Nymph,' whose name was correctly Chariclsea (B.E. ii, 1825, no. 76 = rPyrrhia, Hüb. 1816). Some were disposed to think it not truly indigenous in 1856 ; one of our Members allows but I

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two British specimen's occurrence ; and, indeed, it seems never reared here after its very earliest record: " In Wilks's days it was bred [120 Plates of English Moths & Butts., By B. Wilkes : London 1773, 3, £. 4] by the Hon. Mrs. Walters and by Nathaniel Oldham Esq. The Caterpillar is [white with many rather small dark-blue spots, the dorsal line dusky and subdorsal yellow ] ; its favourite food is the wild larkspur, Delphinium consolida," states Curtis who considered this plant indigenous, though our D. Ajacis, Rchb., is introduced. As British the moth is referred to by Harris in 1775 (Engl. Lep. 13), by Berkenhout in 1789 (Synop. 8, 143) when ' old Dr. Lathom ' possessed a specimen (EMM. 1889, p. 247, then in coli. Dale), by Donovan in 1800 (Brit. Ins. x, 17), Steward in 1802 (Elem. ii, 193) and Turton in 1806 (Gen. Syst. iii, 322). Haworth knew but a single wing found by the Duchess of Portland in a spider's web at Bulstrode (Lepidopt. Brit. 248, no. 261).

Stephens in 1829 enters it next Hadena ochroleuca as unquestionably indigenous; both his and the British Museum specimens came from Windsor ; and another was captured in a Chelsea garden ' a few summers ' before 1807 (Tr. Ent. Soc. 1807, p. 35). As a matter of fact, NO reason exists to suppose it ever occurred here outside gardens of imported plants or that its case is not exactly parallelled by Plusia moneta in our own time, when Meyrick includes this common central European insect in the genus Heliothis (1928, p. 91, nec 1895). Yet during the last füll Century we hear of no more than three examples, again taken in a garden and w ithin a few days of each other, of which one went into George Gascoyne's collection at Newark (Ent. Wk. Intell. iii, 1857, 90).

T h e Continental Hoverer-fly, Merodon equestris, Fab., that appeared in our Monks Soham garden as soon as we planted Mombrisia bulbs, is another case in point: many are quotable.

No definite kind of Foodplant seems to have been ascertained later than Curtis' above single one ; and since its caterpillar's acceptance of the sole Larkspur-species in the British list appears doubtful, our Phanerogamic Recorder's details rather complicate the matter :—" Delphinium consolida and D. Ajacis are two very similar species and the name of the former has often, in the past, been erroneously used by some authors for the latter.

D. consolida, Reichb., is common in central Europe. D. Ajacis, Reichb., is also frequent upon the Continent, and occurs as a very rare cornfield alien in East Anglia, occasionally also elsewhere in England. But kinds are grown here as ornamental annuals in the beds and borders of gardens. Seed-catalogues contain many varieties. T h e Branching Larkspur, D. consolida, was not introduced to England tili about 1838 ; the Rocket Larkspur, D. Ajacis, was introduced as early as about 1573, so this seems to be your species of 1773-1825, rather than the true D. consolida, Reichb : but it is certainly still found both cultivated

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and, on the Breck, wild in Suffolk. In a natural State, D. consolida occurs no nearer than as a casual in cornfields of the Channel Isles."

S I N C E the record of our Firefly appeared (Trans. iii,283)we have stumbled upon Dr. Dubois' investigations of the Cucuyo, Pyrophorus noctilucus, L., in an old no. of the unfortunately defunct Naturalists' Monthly (cf. also Tr. Ent. Soc. 1907, p. xxxii).

This Click-beetle's light organs consist of two on the front thorax and one below the abdomen. The former two give good illumination ahead, laterally and upwards, whereby the Beetle walks in the darkness; when Aying the fine ventral one throws downward a ray extending to a much greater ränge. If the prothoracic apparatus be quenched with black wax on one side, the Cucuyo walks curvedly towards the only illuminated side ; if both be covered, it is at fault, goes hesitatingly with tapping antennas, and soon halts altogether. T h e light gives a pretty long spectrum, ranging from red to the first blue rays, and is greener than that of our palaearctic Glow-worm, Lampyris noctiluca (Trans, ii, 179) ; it is capable of photography, but does not develope chorophyll.

No distinct electric action could be traced to these organs. Their luminosity does not depend upon oxygen for it persists in pure and Compound oxygen, in air, and in pressures under one atmosphere. They persist in brilliancy when segregated from the body ; but the power of emission depends upon moisture and is recoverable, after thorough drying, upon plunging the isolated organs into water.

T H E L O R E of that Mistletoe, now maintaining so precarious a tenure of our County in these tree-felling days, is always of more than mere sentimental interest. We have recently come, by the generosity of our Member Ernest Bedwell, into possession of long series of its insect-denizens Anthocoris visci, Lygus viscicola, Psylla visci, &c., all taken at Hereford long ago by T . Algernon Chapman, who died a score of years since. We had known him well from late in the last Century : a stocky and somewhat short, austere figure with grey beard, tightly buttoned into a reeferjacket after the approved maritime mode, though nothing could have been more misleading for he was an F.R.S. and had from at least 1866 been M.D. Away back in the Ent. Wk. Intell. of May 1856 another Thomas Chapman, of 56 Buchanan-street and later Bothwell -street in Glasgow though English as his surname, â&#x201E;˘ exchanging Lepidoptera ; in 1866-7 both contributed to the EMM., the former from Abergavenny asylum, where he doubtless ' gamed medical experience, and the latter from Glasgow anent K ef< Beetles. Now another of our Members writes last February that " Algernon was son of Thomas who was a cutler and maker of surgical instruments, and must have acquired a fair fortune ;

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but by ill-luck he became a shareholder in the then populär City of Glasgow Bank, which crashed in 1878. He certainly suffered grievous loss as a contributor in the liquidation ; and bad health (accelerated it is feared by the bank failure) compelled him to retire from buisness : see obituary in E M M . xvi, 138. The bank directors were tried on a charge of fabricating and uttering false balance-sheets, and were all convicted and sentenced to varied terms of imprisonment." The eider Chapman was an excellent Naturalist, and wrote on both the Ailsa Craig fauna of the Clyde and new Butterflies from west Africa ; the younger lived for many of his final years, through a score of which we were in constant correspondence, at ' Betula ' in Reigate. " I N VIEW of the Report of the British Trust for Ornithology's Little Owl Food Inquiry, published by Witherby, price 3 /6, I hope the Suffolk Naturalist's Society may withdraw their condemnation of the Little Owl: against which, if I remember right, I protested. We are enjoying beautiful weather here (ULLSWATER, Funchal," Febry. 4 , 1 9 3 8 ) .

The Little Owl is, I think, on the border line between useful and harmful birds : some individuals behave in a gentlemanly way, others do not (ULLSWATER, 3 3 Great Cumberland Place, W . l ; 3 1 August, 1 9 3 8 ) .

—I do not agree with the finding of the above Report. The Trust was biased to begin with, and drew its conclusions from very incomplete data. Their finding drew a storm of letters from readers of the ' Field,' who were mainly men, both sportsmen and naturalists, very much better qualified to give an opinion and using every form of evidence. This culminated in placing the Little Owl as one of the most destructive of our birds of prey : not to merely young game, but song-birds, &c. And it breeds so fast! ( H E N R Y ANDREWS, Bury, 23rd August).

' T H E LAST voyage of the worshipfull M. Thomas Candish, esquire, intended for the South Sea, the Phillipinas, and the Coast of China, with three tall ships and two barks . . . Written

by Mr. John Jane, a man of good Observation imployed in the same and many other voyages . . . ' A most stränge and noiA.D. 1593 some kind of WORME bred Cabo Frio 30 leagues East off the of unsalted PENGUINS. Isle of Placencia (' in Brasill'). " . . . . raine in such plenty, that we were well watered, and in good comfort to return. But after we came nere unto the sun, our dried Penguins [presumably Aptenodytes chrysocoma, Gmel.] began to corrupt, and there bred in them a most lothsome and ugly WORME OF AN INCH LONG. This worme did so mightily increase and devoure our victuals, that there was in reason no hope how we should avoid famine ; but be devoured of the wicked creatures : there was nothing that they did not devour,

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only yron excepted : our clothes, boots, shoes, hats, shirts, stockings and for the ship they did so eat the timbers as that we feared they wou!d undoe us, by gnawing through the ships side. Great was the care and diligence of our captain, master and Company to consume these vermine, but the more we laboured to kill them, the more they increased ; so that at the last we could not sleep for them, but they would eat our flesh and bite like Mosquitos. In this wofull case, after we had passed the Equinoctiall towards the North, our men began to fall sick of such a monstrous disease as I think the like was never heard of: for in their ankles it began to swell; from thence in two daies it would be in their breasts, so that they could not draw their breath, and then feil into their cods : and their cods and yardes did swell most grievously, and most dreadfully to behold, so that they could neither stand, lie, nor goe. Whereupon our men grew mad with griefe . . . . all our men died except 16, of which there were but five able to moove. The Captaine was in good health, the Master indifferent, captaine Cotton [?son of Sir John Cotton of Exning in Suffolk c. 1550] and myself swolne and short winded, yet better than the rest that were sicke, but one boy in health ; upon us five only the labour of the ship did stand . . .

Thus as lost Wanderers upon the sea, the 11 of June 1593, we arrived at Bear-haven in Ireland and there ran the ship on shore " (Hakluyt's Voyages, ed. Goldsmid 1890, xvi, 122 : kindly copied

by Mr. Lingwood).

Suffolk interest here centres in the experiences of a local man, for this Master Thomas Ca[ve]ndish was the great great great grandson of that John Cavendish of London whose surname arose from his mother, the daughter of John Potton, lord by marriage of one of the manors in Cavendish, Suffolk, circa 1353. This London merchant in 1370 acquired from Sir John delaPole both Morston and Grimston Hall manors in Trimley, at the latter of which Thomas, our world's circumnavigator, was born in or about 1555 (DNB. ix, 558).â&#x20AC;&#x201D;The identity of the above Penguins' Worm was discussed at Meetings of the Entom. Society in 1899 (Proc. pp. v-vii); it was regarded as a Bacon Beetle larva (Dermestes vulpinus, L.) by Comm. J. J. Walker, who considered the account of its depredations to be ' somewhat exaggerated ' ! but more likely to have been the Caterpillar of a feather-eating Moth by Mr. C. G. Barrett.

T H E MOST complete section now exposed, exhibiting all our Suffolk strata rising from the fundamental Chalk to superficial Glacial Drift, the latter yet retaining many worked Flints, is to be seen in Coe's chalkpit which was visited from Bramford brickyard on 5 June last by the London Geologists' Association, led by our Member, Prof. Boswell. The next day, Sunday, Mr. Moir, gave in loco quo an account of Boltons' brickfield

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at Dales-road, in Ipswich where the Municipal Museum specimens were later examined. On Bank Holiday an excursion extended over the London Clay and Red Crag from Bawdsey to Orford, and terminated on 8th with the Pleistocene Gravels of Sudbury and Melford.

O U R WARM congratulations went out to Mr. Secretary Nash, and other Members of the Suffolk Aquarists' and Pondkeepers' Association upon the thorough success of their second exhibition, that was held at Ipswich Museum on 28-30 March last: no less than two thousand visitors, largely schoolchildren, were present on 29th. In the cold-water tanks we noted Carp, Tench, Rudd, telescope Moors and Goldfish, of which most interest centred on a couple of Mirror Carp, Cyprinus rex. In the tropical section were a Zebra Fish, hatched a day or so earlier, and pair of lace-tailed Golden Guppy, Labistes reticulata, with their young actually born in the course of exhibition. A gorgeous little male Dwarf Gourami, Colisa lalea, from Bengal was putting together a bubble nest and reinforcing it with algae and moss, for his female's oviposition. Two male Siamese Fightingfish, Betta splendens, were shown solum for fear of inveterate pugnacity ; one wrapped himself round the drab female, and appeared to squeeze from her body eggs that he carried in his mouth to the surface-nest. Blue Gourami, a race of the Threespot Gourami Trichogaster trichopterus, and Barbus 4-zona, were much admired. The Reptile Room afforded a Royal Python, P. regius, lording it over an immature neotropical Alligator, A. lucius, L . : all which were amplified by specimens lent by the Museum officials.—Why should not the Port of Ipswich maintain a permanent Aquarium ?

O U R ELDER confrere, "Norfolk and NorwichNaturalists' Society," which has flourished since 1869—and long may it persist!—issued Part iii of its Transactions xiv on 12 March last. This contains fourteen Articles; and the Contents entirely omit one of the systematically most valuable : ' Miscellaneous Observation ' at p. 308, which is printed as though an addendum to article xiv and contains records from Walberswick, Gorleston and Bamham in Suffolk. Suffolk brains, too, are utilised to some extent in the Lectures, two of which are by Dr. H. Muir Evans and Mr. F. M. Davis, of Beccles and Lowestoft, neither a Member of that Society.

These lectures are accorded three lines each in Article ix of 2\ pages

by T h e [Hon.] Secretary who writes on ' T h e Season, 1936-37,' in an entirely communal way, ignoring all meteorological reference, e.g. " July 22nd, Staverton Forest [Suffolk]. A party visited this forest, much of which remains in its primeval [sie : cf. Trans. SNS. ii, p. eviii] State. It contains many ancient oaks and enormous hollies"—tout court ! T h e whole embraces

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141 pages, against our own concurrent 148 pages with an inferiority of seventy-four Members. Personally we joined the Norfolks in 1895 (Trans, vol. vi, p. viii), though now erroneously ascribed to 1929.

W E HAVE but just happened to discover that the still celebrated John Berkenhout may be accounted a Suffolk Naturalist.

His comprehensive " Outlines or Synopsis of the Natural History of Great Britain and Ireland, containing a Systematic Arrangement of all the Animals, Vegetables and Fossils, which have hitherto been Discovered in these Kingdoms " ; two vol. 8vo ; London [1769] 1789, yet continues to be authoritatively quoted (reviewed at Tr. Ent. Soc. 1807, p. 31). Samuel T y m m s gives the fĂźll list of his works upon very varied subjects, and compiles a short biography (Proc. Bury & W . Suff. Archaeol. Inst, i, May 1849, 47) which shows Dr. Berkenhout to have moved from Winchester during 1783 to Bury, where he practised as a G.P., specialising on midwifery, tili his death on 4 April 1791 while visiting Oxfordshire. He had been born in 1731, son of a Dutch merchant settled at Leeds. Upon going to the Continent for education, he joined the Prussian army, which he relinquished with a captaincy when the war opened between Britain and France in 1756.

An English captaincy preceded the peace of 1760 ; and, after study at Edinburgh, he took his M . D . at Leyden University when thirty-four. Hardships and imprisonment, while accompanying the Royal Commission to our N. American colonies, were recognised by a Govt. pension. Obviously this man of many parts' magnum opus was written during his sojourn in our County.

CCEVALLY with the last lived another doctor, now remembered mainly by his legacy to the Geological Society of London.

William Hyde Wollaston, third son of the Revd. Francis Wollaston, F.R.S. and a noted astronomer, was born at his father's rectory at Chistlehurst in Kent during 1767. He was nursed in the lap of Science, for his brother was Jacksonan professor at Cambridge, later archdeacon of Essex, and his aunt's husband the celebrated Dr. Heberden. William was educated at Charter House and Caius of which he was long a Fellow, taking his M . D . in 1793. He first practised in Huntingdon, but soon came to Bury St. Edmunds where lived an uncle Dr. Charlton Wollaston.

Here he and the Revd. Henry Hasted, M.A., F.R.S. (who writes his memoir : Proc. Bury & W. Suff. Archaeol. Inst, i, 1849, 121 ; cf. p. 49) were wont to ride and ' when we were crossing a heath at a smart trot, he suddenly pulled up, exclaiming " There is Linum radiola," ' a minute plant (Trans, supra, ii, 65) now known as Radiola linoides, Roth., still occurring therearound. So he was a pretty keen-eyed Botanist; but his interests were so numerous as to embrace Birds, Mammals, Geology, Mineralogy, Meteorites,

NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. 50 Lightning (in a letter of 1820-6 to Sir Henry E. Bunbury of Barton Magna), Meteorology and especialy Mirages, Stars, Chemistry, Sound, Electricity and ' ethereal vibrations,' on which he wrote treatises in Philos. Trans. 1800-29 ; in 1816 he took up Angling, especialyfly-fishing.Disliking physic he retired to London in 1800 and occasionally travelled to the Lakes, Scotland and after 1815 upon the Continent, having—rare occurrence !—made Science pay, mainly the thirty thousand that his discovery of Platinum's malleability produced. He moralised on Silk-worms (Bombyx mori, L.) andfirstunearthed fossil Hycena crocuta, Zim., var spelcea, Gldf., in Yorks caves. At his house in Dorset-street, he died a bachelor on 28 Dec. 1828 and was buried at Chistlehurst, bequeathing two thousand pounds to the Royal Society, whose Medal he held and of which he succeeded Sir Joseph Banks as Vice-president, and one to the Geological Society where W. H. Wollaston, M.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. was the earliest of its Principal Benefactors, in three per cent. reduced bank annuities to form the Wollaston ' Donation Fund,' by which we are glad to see that our Member, Prof. P. G. H. Boswell, benefited in 1917.

WE ARE always prepared to unhelm in memorv of passed Suffolk Naturalists. Upon recently running through the official list of Fellows of the Linnean Society of London for 1823, we were much gratified tofindno less thanfifteenfrom our County at that time ; this is more than can be shown to-day, but then Science was more succinct than nowadays and kindred Societies far fewer.

Many of these, our precursors, have long faded from mind but a few among the names will live for ever :—

Richard Dykes Alexander, Esq., Ipswich Thomas Allen Esq., F.A.S., Ipswich Major-General Sir Henry Edward Bunbury, Bart., KC.B., F.H.S., Mildenhall Charles Collinson Esq., Chauntry, near Ipswich Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, Bart., F.R.S., F.A.S., F.H.S., [Hardwick] Bury, Suffolk.

David Elisha Davy Esq., The Grove, Yoxford Rev. Richard [?T] Dreyer, LL.B., Bungay Robert Hamilton, M.D., Ipswich Edward Hasell Esq., Ipswich Rev. Henry Hasted, M.A., F.R.S., Bury, Suffolk Rev. John Holme, M.A., Freckenham, near Mildenhall Rev. William Kirby, M.A., F.R.S., Soc. Nat. Scrut., Berolin. et Caes.

Nat. Cur. Mosq. Soc., Barham.

James Lynn., M.D., Woodbridge, Suffolk [Rev. Revett Sheppard, M.A., Wrabness, Essex (bom at Campsey Ash).]

[Dawson Turner Esq. M.A., F.R.S., F.A.S., &c. Yarmouth.]

Rev. Robert Meadows White, M.A., Haiesworth, Suffolk.

William Henry Williams, M.D., Ipswich.

WE ARE glad to see it proposed, by its Urban District Council on 2 September last, that Stowmarket " set up a small Museum to house items of historic interest to the town, possessed by certain

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inhabitants Willing to present them, if suitable room could be found where they could be kept and made available for inspection by the public ; such room could undoubtedly be found in the new offices" at Red Gables in Ipswich Road, acquirable by the Council next April.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Some rooms of Long Melford Hospital have been fitted to house a small local Museum.

Mr. A. C. EVANS, of the Rothamsted Experimental Station at Harpenden in Herts, has been making ' some observations on the chemistry and physiology of Insect cuticle.' At our Trans, i, 226, was asked the question : What acid will dissolve Spiders' web. without injuring the Insects' integument round which it is wrapped; and at lib. cit. ii, 79, our Member Mr. Gilles amply furnishes the required information respecting the beetles Cistela atra, Fab. Now Mr. Evans details (Proc. Ent. Soc., 2 Feb. 1938) the effect of dilute acid and alkali on the cuticle of the somewhat closely allied Heteromerid Tenebrio molitor, L., commonly known as the Mealworm ; and works out the absorption and persistency of part of the integumental chitin from larva through pupa to the adult beetle.

AT a spring week-end in June 1865 Robert Hislop of Falkirk who died in June 1880, E. C. Rye of the British Museum, and Dr. David Sharp who later often collected in the Suffolk Breck, three of Britain's best Coleopterists, journeyed to Rannoch in search of the beautiful and still verv rare Beetle Cryptocephalus 10-maculatus. In those days the canny and Calvinistic Scot brooked no sawboath-breaking, but ousted you from your very lodgings for its breach. So Hislop dutifully attended kirk, and the Doctor read a book (possibly not biblical) on the hill-side, while Rye with all the Sassenach downrightness doffed coat and proceeded to sweep for the Beetle with great gusto and perseverance. Glancing from his book, Sharp espied a specimen of their desideratum sitting along side him on a dwarf-sallow leaf and surruptitiously boxed it, with later more, tili he had secured no less than eighty specimens. In due course the churchman and perspiringly emptv-handed, the sweeper joined him, loudly lamenting lack of lĂźck. " But I gave them one apiece," Dr. Sharp was wont to point his tale with true Scots large heartedness !