News for Naturalists 4 Part 2

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NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. ' The more I see of Men, the more I love my Dog.' ' Vilis

est hominis

natura.'

A BAND, attached at Kharlov Island in the Barents Sea, two hundred miles within the arctic circle, by the Central Bureau of Bird-ringing in Moscow, was found on a Kittiwake Gull that has been recently killed near Little Fogo Island in Newfoundland by the Canadian Govt.'s dept. of Natural Resources. This seems to be the first Russian Bird noticed in Canada and illustrates valuable data, derivable from ' ringing,' in the determination of migration routes and wintering grounds.

JUST before Christmas 1938 a trawl brought up from some forty fathoms a mixed catch of food-Fish and Sharks off East London near Cape Town. Among them was a specimen, said by the skipper to be brilliant steel-blue with dark blue eyes, a length of five feet and weight of 127 pounds when alive, that went to the East London Museum and this year has been described before the English Linnean Society by Mr. R. J. Norman as pertaining to the genus Coelacanthus of Agass. in 1843. At the Linnean Meeting Sir Arthur Woodward pointed out that no species of this fossil genus had hitherto been known to still exist, and he demonstrated its identity with extinct forms, down to the number of rays in the dorsal fin. None of the fossil specimens can be less than 250-million years old and then lived in north America, western Europe and Spitzbergen, Madagascar and, just as today, south Africa where it is presumed confined to the deepest ocean-bed, whence the example trawled doubtless had wandered for the first time in scientific record.

IN a valuable but quite unreported Lecture to the Beccles Historical Society at Pakefield last September, Dr. Muir Evans affirmed that the Barnard and Newcome sandbanks, off our shore at Kirkley and Kessingland, cause all Suffolk coast erosion, as he personally had observed for the past forty years. In such chff-debris the late Dr. W. M. Crowfoot of Beccles had found bones of Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Sabre-toothed Tiger, Horse and two kinds of Elephants among the Forest Bed deposit, immediatelv to the south of Pakefield old lighthouse, whichSirRiderHaggard of JJitchingham used to occupy as a summer residence thirty years ago.

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THE exploitation of Guano deposits in Peru began in 1840 in response to demand for fertilisers in north-west Europe ; and, for some half-century that country's whole economic life revolved around this one source of revenue. Especial geographic conditions favoured the industry's development: the Guano-bearing areas are many desert islands off the coast, extending from 20° S. to near 7° S., about 850 miles. The cold water of the Humboldt Current, explains C. F. Jones in his 1930 ' S. America' : N.Y., p. 174, carries great variety of animal and plant Plankton, upon which feed hosts of small Fish, themselves the food of a myriad Birds, e.g. the Guanay (Phalacrocorax Bougainvilli), Piquero (Sula variegata) and Alcatraz (Pelecanus thogus), all peculiar to that Current. So phenomenal were the returns that this industry alone placed Peru in the first rank of South American republics. A few years before its disastrous war with Chili in 1879-84, the annual revenue reached over 27-million dollars, wherewith the Govt. developed agriculture, built highways and railways, and imported much negro and oriental labour.

Then folk killed off the Birds, and other fertilisers were invented.

Since 1909 the remaining depleted supply is controlled by the Compania Admin. del Guano.

THE celebrated herd of Wild Cattle, Bos taurus, L., in Chillingham Park, Northumberland (Trans, supra i, 210), was recently threatened with extinction by Lord Tankerville in consequence of the Govt's exorbitant taxation. Now comes the glad news that an Association has been formed to safeguard it for an indefinite period with adequate funds.

IN Andrew Sutor's good little novel 1 By Stroke of Sword ' (if memory serves) adventures are introduced anent the great Pitch Lake of Trinidad. It is interesting to find this unique feature of the Island to constitute its main source of income.

T h e Lake lies a mile from the sea at its south-east angle on the Paria Gulf. Much of Trinidad, to the south of its central hillrange, contains Petroleum ; and two oil-fields have lately Sprung into commercial entities there. The Lake is of some 115 acres in extent, is the world's chief source of natural Asphalt according to Clarence Jones' 1930 ' South America,' p. 696, and is of better quality than the usual Petroleum in general usage. It lies on the surface, is basketed by West Indian negroes to the refinery beside the Lake, and thence shipped from the one-third mile pier.

Production is estimated to hold out for at least another four centuries at it present rate.

Is anything remembered in Ipswich of the Revd. George Routh, M.A., the natural philosopher ? The Obelisk, erected to his memory, and its encircling grove of trees together still form one of the beauty-spots of Foxhall (Trans, ii, p. clii). We

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have just stumbled upon his mural tablet in St. Clement's church at Ipswich, of which along with Holbrook he is stated to have been rector, setting forth his virtues and recording his death on 26 January 1821.

EVOLUTION has virtually ended for, excepting slight modifications to existing species, there has not been a single new Mammalian order for a considerable period. I believe it really ended when Man appeared on the Earth. If tliis view be correct, it shows that some intelligent guiding power is behind creation and that Man was created for some purpose. Evolution, which has always been right in the end, could not be explained unless it be admitted that there is some power of the kind directing its functions, declared Dr. Robert Broom in his address to the Witwatersrand University last August, sec. Reuter. Such a startling suggestion may well hold in the case of Mammals and, indeed, all the larger Vertebrates : the power is not likelv to continue benefits for the purpose of Man's ruthless destruction.

But among Mosses, Liverworts, Worms and certainly among the lower forms of Insect-life—Chalcids, Proctotrypids, Chironomids and such Lepidoptera as migrate—evolution is still plainly traceable. Regarding evolution, even geologically a thousand years is no inconsiderable period and one at which we find, without reference to classical authors, marine Mammals already in apparently just their present condition. For King Alfred (849-99) set forth in his edition of Orosius (603) his Visit, probably at Linford in Berks (cf Asser, cap. 98), from Othere the discoverer of North Cape and White Sea, who told how six Norsemen of Helgoland, ' the first that ever burst into the silent sea,' ' hunted the Walrus, the Narwhale and the Seal, harpooning threescore of them.' Which doubting, Alfred closed his memoranda. Whereupon Othere, ' raising his noble head, stretched his brown hand, saying Behold the tooth of the Walrus !'

Icel. vall a whale and hross a horse. Alfred's edition is, indeed, a geographical survey of Europe complete to the ninth Century.

WE are glad to find that the Crag mammal and molluscan tossils of the late Major Moor of Bealings (Proc. supra ii, p. cciv) n V e u ° U n d a h o m e i n I P s w i c h Museum, where we examined in Uctober the unique Suffolk Seal, Phoca Moori of Prof. Newton (Irans. 11, 29), and many very rare Shells. Our Member Mr. Murreil says ( w . 2 Feb. 1933) this Seal was excavated from the P» by Mrs. Howse's Grove-farm in Bealings.

OUR BADGERS are adequately preserved.—Mr. R. S . Harris, wntes on 23 Nov. 1939 : Very many thanks for the three-pounds «leque, safely received today. It would be difficult to estimate |USt u m a n y BadSers there are in Earth because, as you ™ow, they are very shy animals and we see them only from time

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to time during summer evenings, although we often hear them calling, even as recently as one mild morning last week. There must be a good many here, as is shown by the amount of damage they do to the arable field by undermining it and making great outlet holes, which always have to be filled in before ploughhorses or tractors dare get to work over the spot. Otherwise most of their excavating is done on the meadow side of their ' earthed ' bank, where some new big holes have been made further along the hedge. Rest assured that we should let you know at once if anything were happening to them that we could not cope with.

T H I S Society's Mammal Recorder, Mr. Henry Andrews, determined to throw up his curatorship of the Bury Museum in February; and Mr. Frank Leney, O.B.E., the well-known late curator of Norwich Museum, has filled the vacancy both there and among our Recorders. We last saw Mr. Andrews in Bury on 20 April. He next spent some time with his sister in the New Forest, and proposed going abroad " for an indefinite period with no fixed plans. I hope to arrive in British Guiana early in the longest dry season in August, and shall try to penetrate far inland to observe the fauna, later taking ship through Panama and the Pacific Islands to Australia, but anything may cause one to change the route." Mr. Andrews sailed in the Hollander ' Stuyvesant' on 10 July for Trinidad, where he tramped the shore and through mountain forests, putting up with Creoles and noting numerous gorgeous Lepidoptera and Birds, but never a single Beetle. On 20 August he wrote that he had been in Georgetown a couple of weeks, studying in museums and preparing to investigate the interior. May his shadow never grow less !