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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
THE THUNDER STORM.
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yet persistent a motion that one wondered if it were the height that one had climbed the hill, revealing a yet broader vista, rather than the sky itself growing overcast. Still the ambient rays of Sol embraced me on the heath. But soon all doubt became dispelled, for there the clouds had almost parted midway twixt their van and earth ; and where the thinning line shone through were three flakes of inky blackness, resting on the tail of the foremost cloud-bank, with their apices pointed downward, and yet again beneath appeared three slender streaks. I could almost see in them the earth-bound angels with down-pointed swords of vengence, familiar in Dore's Triumph of Christianity. But soon the second rank moved up and, intermingling, added legions more to this angelic band, though truth to say they were by far more like to Chaos than of heaven.—Then on a sudden so fierce a blast of western wind fßll takes me in the breast that scarce headway can I make, but struggle on with low bent frame and staggering Step to reach the brow atop the hill I climb. Anon, as though perforce, I turn my eyes and find that Night has conquered Sol. Far driven back across the wide-flung tracks of heath, I yet catch glimpses of his light upon the distant copse, but still as I gaze they fade and ebb further and yet further tili all is leaden dun. And still the wind howls on, as though in search of victims to devour.— So buffeting it is, I'm barely conscious when the first thick drops of rain descend ; and even now I greatly doubt if it were rain at all. It stung my naked head and face and hands as though small shot had issued from a gun ; as, all around upon the springy turf, the milk-white hail skipped up and jumped like winter's frozen fleas. Then suddenly this ponderous panoply of Night was rent, as was the temple's veil, throughout its length with one bright and blinding flash, for all the world as though an angel's sword had driven home upon the breast of Earth. A breathless pause. Outpealed the ordnance of the skies : no single clap was this, but all along the line throughout the arc of heaven the volley ran, from south to north and yet once more from south to north, in well sustained terrific verberation, like Cerberus at the mouth of hell. And all the time the hail flew at the beaten track, and at my neck and arms. The pyrotechnic fires were fine, indeed, and flashed upon the sable wadding of the storm like some electric leeches in a bowl; though louder far than mightiest ocean roared the clashing of the cumuli above the darkened world. As currents from the highest or the lowest winds caught up the downy mass, it semeed to advance or to withdraw its ranks; whole hosts were hurried forward swiftly to the north and then anon the rearguard passed them, clash on clash. Hail was now melted into rain, of quite torrential force, which took not long to drench my clothes upon that open eminence and numb my skin beneath its clammy
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THE THUNDER STORM.
grasp. Mother Nature füll well knows how hard it is to write her lessons on our brain, with no preface from our fleshly fads : she wets you to the skin then drys you with her heat, she starves your body in a barren yield ere showering manna with a lavish hand.— And so I found it now, as wet and weary with the warfare of the winds I gazed upon the elemental force of fire and sleet let loose to grapple in the central blue. For greyer grew the sky and softer feil the drops. No sudden veil uplifted from the earth, but like a wraith before an honest torch's glow, night glided ever to the north with all her threatening hosts in flight. Like Phoenix resurgit, Sol approached me o'er the s w a r d : his track illumined as sorae conqueror's car with trophies of the fray, for wheresoe'er he touched the earth there nstantly outsprang bright silver from each blade of grass, each tiny twig.—Thus came the Lord of Day,with warming and invigorating beams to chase away the dank and chill sensations of the routed Night. T h e wind had hurtled on its path and in its stead great calmness filled the air, save where again burst forth the glad seraphic psean of the nesting Lark, and honey Bees took up the strain among the early flowers of Whitlowgrass or blue Veronica upon this glowing heath. Once more I set my face towards the nearing crest, as Kirby might have done : with lithesome step and bounding heart I passed upon my way : This (thought I) is Nature's doing ; it is wondrous in our eyes.
THE WORMS OF SUFFOLK. PRELIMINARY L I S T (SEC. ' PLYMOUTH MARINE FAUNA ' 1 9 3 1 ; &C).
Phylum i :
PLATYHELMINTHES.
Class CESTODA. O r d e r PSEUDOPHYLLA. F a m i l y PHYLLOBOTHRIID;E.
1.
Ichthyotcenia ambigua, Duj.—Several of these Tape-worms were encysted on Sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus, L., in Yare at Yarmouth 25 Feb. 1934 (Trans, ii, 284).
Phylum I i : N E M A T H E L M I N T H A . Class NEMATODA (olim Entozoa, cf. Entom. Wk. Intell. 1861). These are the T h r e a d Worms of which very many kinds are parasitic ; a score of them attack man and sometimes fatally, nor are they all small for a subcutaneous one attains a length of six feet in the tropics and another, in Mammals' kidneys, may be over three feet. Will our medical Members kindly supply Suffolk data? Their economy is extremely various, however : 2. Tylenchus tritici, Bauer , is an Eel-worm that was found distorting wheat-ears at Barham before 1810 by the Revd. William Kirby (cf. his Life by Freeman 1852, 150; Monograph