An Old Suffolk Naturalist: Mr. Singleton Smith

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BLISTER BETTLE BRED I N SUFFOLK.

condition wherein it hibernates, resuming its white but quiescent larval form in mid- April; on 30th the true pupal State was assumed, and imagines emerged on 23 May (I.e. xvi, 34). The active larva feeds on Bees' grubs and honey stored in Eldertwigs ; but, more naturally it is supposed (I.e. xvi, 70), on those of the subterranean genera Andrena and Halictus, which would account for its discovery at grass-roots in the present case. My larva was very sluggish and about to pupate ; it was of a dull orangeyellow colour and about one inch in length, or rather longer if fully expanded ; its shape was elongately cylindrical and similar to the Wireworm-larvae of Skipjack-beetles (Elaterid.ee), though as much as A-inch in diameter ; its tuft of quite rough grass was overhanging the vertical face of the pit. Species of the allied genus Hornia are well-known to attain their perfect strueture in autumn, but to remain quiescently enclosed in their two larval and one pupal cast skins until the following spring's warmth impels emergence : in both U.S.A. and north Africa, where they inhabit a solidly walled-in cell at the inner extremity of nests of the British bee-genus Anthophora, which are there some six inches below the ground's surface.

AN

OLD

SUFFOLK

MR.

SINGLETON B Y JACK

NATURALIST: SMITH.

GODDARD.

Seventeen years ago I was a pupil in Edward John Singleton Smith's school, St. Margaret's College in Lowestoft. I remember him intimately, enjoyed the pleasure of accompanying him on many a ramble in quest of Insects in all Orders, and to him I shall ever be indebted for directing and developing my innate love of Nature. One could not fail to be the richer from acquaintance with his kindly, courteous and intensely interesting personality : the late A. H. Patterson avows that, ' of all the Naturalists who have sat in my houseboat on Breydon Water, none was ever more entertaining than that lovable old bachelor Singleton Smith, entomologist and dominie.'

Little is now known about parentage or early life, beyond his birth of a good Surrey family at Chobham during 1860, and that he early secured an assistant school-master's post, whence he saved enough cash to defray his fees at Durham University.

Respecting the rough treatment there reeeived from his fellowstudents, he used to narrate how, in consequence of a lecture he gave upon their want of Observation and due regard for Natural History, he was taken in one of their river-boats and deliberately pitched into the mud near the Wear's bank, where he became encased in horrid feculent slime : " I presume I was punished for posing as a pedantic prig," he used to alliteratively add!

AN OLD SUFFOLK

NATURALIST.

225

Subsequently he under-mastered in the public schools of Epsom, Bedford and Ardingly in Sussex, finally gravitating to Lowestoft in 1895 ; here he set up a school of his own which did not greatly flourish, and played in the town football eleven.

From his earliest years Mr. Smith was a keen Lepidopterist and a great walker, covering a prodigious mileage in pursuit of rare Moths : " I carried a net that was taller than myself when I was eight years old and enthusiastically sought Butterflies, for Entomologists are born so, and as a rule begin to show their bent at an early age," he told me. He was, also, a good Botanist and, Mr. Long says, the sole discoverer of Deadly Nightshade in north-east Suffolk, near Hulver bridge. T h e east English coast saw most of his later collecting, after the morning bathe which was taken daily the whole year round, except latterly.

Its natural complement was a search of the adjacent sand-hills, be they at Deal or Aldeburgh, Benacre or Lowestoft (where this habit was recounted), for larvas of the local Epischnia Farrella, a M o t h he persistently failed to find. Between May and August he notes the capture of such good Micros as Phthorimaea vicinella on the Suffolk coast, Crambus fascelinellus and margaritellus, Sitotroga cerealella and Gelechia mundella, all very local on that of Norfolk. When collecting his ready wit in untoward circumstances, as well as in finding a vagrant Swallowtail on our shore (Trans, iv, 35), never left him at a loss. Upon one occasion, when he had smuggled a too-long-dead cat into a railway-carriage to be laid down in woods as a bait for Purple Emperor Butterflies, he utterly failed to share his fellow travellers' all too hypersensitive consciousness of the least ill odour. Upon another, he quite forgot just where he had mislaid his gun, when accosted by a respectful keeper who was escorting the shooting party, into the midst of which he had all unwittingly stumbled one day when blatantly trespassing after entomological game.

For too long he tried to work alone, and not tili late in life did he care to exchange specimens with such kindred spirits as our former Members the brothers Hayward of Somerset, who seem to have visited him in Suffolk once or twice ; Mr. Burton, though long a neighbour in Lowestoft and of similar tastes, never heard of him in life. Such exclusiveness is later deplored by him in a letter to Patterson of Yarmouth : " Though an erratic sort of naturalistic coon, I have tried to work by myself, without the aids of books or hints from other entomologists, in the years gone by. I much regret now, however, being so solitarn a bittern and having confined my researches to too narrow a circle, for I feel myself to be a lonely Wanderer in tangled paths: " much as Jean Henri Fabre ' feit from early childhood drawn tothings of Nature for which I have the gift of Observation

MR.

E. J.

SINGLETON S M I T H ,

1860—1926.

F.R.Hist.S.,

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AN OLD SUFFOLK NATURALISTS

though it were ridiculous to look to heredity for its explanation, nor is it found in schoolmasters. I had no scientific instruction, and set no foot within a lecture hall. Lacking these, I persisted tili the bump of Observation shed its contents.'

Mr. Smith was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, though not of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology; and this Frontispiece of 1923, though poor, is the best ofhimnowavailable.

Actually he was clean-shaven, and latterly bald excepting a grey rim of hair ; the eyes were dark brown, beady and piercing ; the legs rather bowed, but he was a powerful runner and could overtake most insects ; usually he wore blue serge, very thick boots, and a dicky with vivid red tie. He died at St. Margaret's College on 10 November 1926, aged sixty-six, as is commemorated on the head-stone erected by friends, old pupils and friendly societies, over his grave in Gisleham churchyard. This I copied to-day, 1 September 1941, when it was in beautiful butterfly Company, amid Large-tortoiseshells, Painted-ladies and Peacocks, flaunting on Buddleia-flowers in the adjacent rectory garden.

His extensive collection of Moths was bequeathed to the Lowestoft Literary and Scientific Association, who have loaned it for exhibition to the Public Library there, where I recently enjoyed the privilege of rearranging it in a new-provided forty-drawer cabinet; but the majority of the Micro-lepidoptera, upon which he latterly specialised, are in Norwich Castle Museum. This cabinet very narrowly escaped total demolition when Lowestoft Library was shorn in half by a bomb on 6 March last; most luckily it happened to be in the part left Standing, and on 8 July the Librarian assured me that the collection yet remains in perfect order. I have much enjoyed collecting these rather meagre details of a man whose apparent worth grows upon one with the lapse of years ; it too often happens that one's retiring friends loom larger when lost.

THE THUNDER STORM.

BY A MEMBER.

L o w on the horizon was a black line, like a flat coast viewed from the sea. Around me the sun shone in all the wealth of his young spring glory; the Larks upraised their triumph song from the placid ether overhead and on every side the Gorse was decked with flowers most loved of Linne, while between alternate patches of tawny Bracken vied with new-thrust Thornleaf. I was amidst a heathery heath, with beauteous Nature spread broadcast all round ; and I was passing into Night!—Ahead to right and left wefe banked dense slate-black masses of cumuluscloud, but further intensified by a rather paler space between ; and these upreared themselves imperceptibly, with so sluggish