News for Naturalists 4 Part 4

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NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. " The beginning of Nature was miraculous, so also is its continuance : Nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes."—Huxley 1883.

WE had no idea, when writing of our late Member Mr. W. S. Gilles at page lxxxvi of vol. iv, that he was an opulent personage.

He possessed so little the air of savoir-vivre that we always regarded him in the higher light of our Society's most Learned Chemist. Among the latest benefactions to the Entom. Soc. Lond., we are surprised to find bequests from him of sixteen hundred pounds last year and two thousand during the previous one. Almost one regrets our Rule vi!—though it does not exclude Donations.

IT is good to hear from our local Members that Aletia turca, L., for which we have so long and vainly worked recently in the New Forest, has been turning up in Hants outside that area in late July this year on surreptitious sugar, along with Catocala promissa, &c. Also that the Asparagus Beetle's distingue cousin Criocoris Lilii, L., regarded through our life-time as a mere visitant to Britain, has just been found to occur annually in some numbers on the allied Solomons Seal and various Liliaceas, such as Lilium candidum, within a limited area of Surrey during August, on Ist of which month many were yet larval. Quite a large number of the rare wingless Scorpion-fly, Boreus hyemalis, too, were discovered in Kent moss during September ; it is usually rare, known no nearer Suffolk than Herts and Epping Forest.

AN advertisement, interesting in conjunction with Mrs. Critten's exhibition of the same merchant's Token* at our Meeting in June 1939, is printed in Science Gossip of 1892, p. 164 : " To the Curious Observers of Natural Phenomena. T. Hall, well known to the virtuosi as the first artist in Europe for stuffing and preserving all kinds of Birds, Beasts, and Reptiles, so as to resemble the Attitudes and perfection of life ; respectfully informs *" T . Hall, of the Finsbury Mus. about 1800, was a taxidermist.

See Notes and Queries (4) x. 1872, 447," says our friend Dr. C. D. Sherborn in his most useful ' Where is the Collection ? ' but just pub. in Nov. 1941, though dated 1940.—Ed.

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the public, that by a method peculiar to himself, he now makes the stuffed birds to sing as though they were alive. Specimens of his surprising Art may be seen at his Museum, opposite The terrace, City Road, Finsbury Square, London ; where a capital collection of Stuffed Birds, Beasts and Insects, are to be sold, in the highest State of preservation, well adapted for Tea Gardens and other public places, by which a great profit may arise to the purchaser's advantage, he also buys and sells all sorts of curiosities.

Admission to the Museum 6d. each." There follow verses too long to quote; and a MS. date ' March 1800.' One wonders how the post mortem bird-voices of this rum old ' Zoonecrophylagium' were reproduced.—No, n o : none of your modern B.B.C., mind ! " Sirs,—Have you any idea where the flies go in winter time ; or alternatively, where do they come from in summer time ?

Yours, etc., R.I.C. (New Barnet)." Which doubts are resolved by the Editor of ' The Daily Mirror ' of 19 June last, thus : " Flies lay eggs in the autumn and then pass out. The eggs hatch in the spring and the flies pass in again " : tout court, and never did words contain less truth ; at them the late Dr. Gahan, who devoted so much time to the habits of Musca domestica, L., might well turn in his grave. He proved, what was already pretty generally accepted, that imagines House Flies themselves hibernate.

I AM not at all sure (writes Dr. Haines in lit. 29 March last) that Oliver Goldsmith was so entirely without knowledge of his subject, when writing on Nature, as is too generally held. I have my mother's rather early edition, though not the first, of his ' Animated Nature ' that was originally issued, incompletely, just after his death in 1774 ; and all, I think, of his other works including a plum first issue of first edition of ' Vicar of Wakefield.'

Some of his bird references in ' The Deserted Village,' e.g. those respecting the Bittern, are evidently first-hand. Undoubtedly he stated the late H. Elliot Howard's " Territory " theory concerning bird-life in so many words in his Animated Nature, and applied the name territory to the domain held by the cock-bird of the various species. Howard's death, some few months ago, was a great loss to Ornithology. Other parts of Goldsmith's narratives may be found, verbatim, in the Comte de Buffon's general Natural History, as translated and abridged in an edition " Published as the Act directs for C. & G. Kearsley, Fleet Street, Jan. 31, 1792," which I possess, dedicated by the Editor to Mrs. Montague, March 1, 1792. But I nowhere therein find the remotest reference to Goldsmith's ' territories,' expounded Vol. iv, page 237 of his 1816 Animated Nature.

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WE are distressed to hear that Mr. F. W. Frohawk has landed on the rocks and is stony broke. Any spacious-pocketed Member, who cares to do so (and some have already), is urged to extend the boy-scout act to him, c/o Miss Whiteman, Kingsland, Mayfield Road, Mayfield. No man is better known to our Butterflologists than Mr. Frohawk, whose recent books are so indispensable: unluckily, he writes in May, " the publishers teil me the whole of their bound stock was destroyed by fire and their premises burned to the ground, along with all the coloured blocks, precluding reissue." On British Butterflies he has persistently worked since at least 1868— with this deplorable result! Many of us have, like Huxley, ' no time for making money.'

D R . NICHOLAS G W Y N ' had drank copiously at one of the most liberal fountains to be found in Europe,' for he pursued his studies at Leyden under the celebrated Boerhaave from a very early time in his life, which had begun on 14 July 1710, the year of John Ray's ' Historia Insectorum.' By descent he owned a fine old mansion near Fakenham in Norfolk, which had to be demolished because dilapidated so late as about 1820, but was then rebuilt on nearly the same site and contains a sumptuous oak chimney-piece, carved with the Gwyn arms, from the earlier structure. Before Coming home, however, Nicholas completed his course at the Dutch university after his father's decease. Twice he married but had no children when, late in life, he settled at Ipswich. In the Gentleman's Magazine of 1796, part ii, p. 913, is a note on the erstwhile mansion of Sir Anthony Wingfield, executor to King Henry viii, wherein we are told that " part of the building has served as a playhouse, and the family chapel opposite thereto is succeeded by Dr. Gwynne's house " : which is to say that the mansion was on the north side of Tacket-street in the middle of Ipswich, and the chapel, upon whose site the Doctor then lived, was on the south side of the same Street, almost or quite at the corner of the present Wingfield-street, branching out of it at right angles (Entom. 1919, 233).

So sturdy was he that, in his seventy-fifth year and the hottest weather, he frequently walked the five miles thence to the old Barham Parsonage on the main Norwich-road, " then approached by a narrow wicket with posts higher than the gate ; and often, while working in his garden or sitting in his parlour, Mr. Kirby would look up and see the shovel-hat adorning one post, the cumbrous wig and pigtail ornamenting the other, of his facetious friend " who that year introduced him to the study of Entomology. Both had long worked Botany in common, though Kirby was but twenty-six and curate of Barham in 1785. Impossible it is to form any adequate idea of the accession thus made to his pleasures and enjoyments: like a new and exquisite sense added, comparable to the removal of scales from blind eyes, enabling him to gaze

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on verdant landscape or contemplate glories of the firmament.

Not tili he had attained eighty-seven did ' Nicholas Gwyn, M.D., of Barons Hall in Fakenham,' die at Ipswich and lie buried in the churchyard of Rushmere there. Nearly a half-century later Kirby well remembered him as that Mecsenas he had loved so well and whose memory he had honoured in 1802 by describing the wild Bee, Andrena Gwynana, ' memoriae botanici periti, tum et natura; scrutatoris indefessi.' The Fakenham property passed to a cousin, Hamon Gwyn esquire and his sons (Freeman's Life of Kirby, 67). We find nothing about Nicholas in Ipswich annals ; but the Bee perpetuates, and will ever preserve, his name throughout the Palaearctic Region.

BRITAIN'S bloated ability to pay for Continental imports, that might well be produced by very slight labour at home through the past Century, has come to the fore recently by those imports' war-restriction. Hence the Ministry of Health issued an appeal for ' intensive' [which sounds very like destructive] collection of such of the MEDICINAL PLANTS as are indigenous, and asked the Red Cross Agricultural Fund Committee to organise this effort. On 15 August this Fund's local branch at 6 Princes-street in Ipswich received the appeal; on 26th it expressed gratitude to the Suffolk Naturalists' Society if we could recommend the best person to undertake such work in our County. Your Hon. Secretary forwarded it the same day to our Botanical Recorder (Mr. Mayfield, as Mr. Simpson had been earlier called to the colours), who at once replied that similar appeal had already been made by the E. Suffolk Education Committee to all head teachers, who were appalled when the immense quantity of fresh Plants needed to compose the dried articles was realised. The Society refused to countenance such vast destruction.

The fourth son of the first Earl of Iddesleigh, Canon the Hon. A. F. NORTHCOTE, who was rector of Monks Eleigh for thirty-three years, for the whole of that time prominently connected with public work on the West Suffolk County Council [and resigned from our Society upon leaving Suffolk in 1932], celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday yesterday at his home in Devon, where he has lived since his retirement (local Daily Paper, 3 Nov. 1941), and we sincerely hope he will continue to live most happily to celebrate many more.

It has been discovered that Arno's Grove, whence Curtis figures the now rare beetle, Molorchus minor, in 1825 (Trans, supra, p. 64), lay in the little village of Southgate in Middlesex, just seven miles due north of Charing Cross : its S i t u a t i o n was evidently unknown to Canon Fowler. In Arno's Grove there still exists a considerable lake, near the Southgate end of Bounds Green-road, which lake in 1827 was called Betys Style, rendered Bedstile by the entomological retired wine-merchant, M r .

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William Jones (1750-1818), who collected through the woods and fields frora Enfield to London on 20 May 1765 and doubtless fished Bedstile for those ' Water Insects in very great Plenty' that he took on 5 August that year. One of his M S . note-books, now preserved at Oxford Museum ( T r . Soc. Brit. Ent. 1934, 160), records that he ' bred 22 June 1795 in my garden ' at no. 10 Manor-street in Chelsea a specimen of Heliothis delphinii; and that Bulstrode, where the Duchess of Portland found the same species ' wing (Trans, supra, p. 44), was the Duke's Park of that name in Bucks.

MR. WILTSHIRE, our Member in Iran, writes that several Moths and at least one Melitaea Butterfly new to Science have been discovered by him in Persian mountains around Shiraz.

He adds that Psara (Pachyzancla) licarsisalis, Walk. (cf. supra, p. 198), is a good species and distinct from abstrusalis, extending from Lebanon to India, where its food-plant of this name is well known. ' Best wishes to all friends in good old Suffolk,' he subjoins.

IN August M r . R. J . Lydamore of Henstead near Southwold sent for identification a most interesting small Bird, that had both the legs and Bullfinchish beak bright crimson and the black tail cross-barred with white, including which the entire length was not over three inches. It had just been found dead in a house there, into which it had apparently flown of its own accord.

Your Hon. Secretary sent it, already becoming a trifle ' high,' by next post to the Member most likely to recognise Foreign Birds (now that Dr. Ticehurst is dead). As he failed to recognise it, he sent it within a half-hour of its reception to Ipswich Museum " for any help I could get from there. I made two visits but failed to see Maynard, so on 19th I wrote to him about it. After two days, I receive his reply enclosed. I am indeed sorry, and deplore their action in destroying the Bird. I allocated it to the Finch class, though hardly a freak Goldfinch which it most closely resembled among Britishers; but, even accepting the feathers as immature, I regarded it as a stranger, arrived peculiarly early after nesting, before migration had begun. Has any other been observed ? " T h e Ipswich Curator states on 2Ist " I did not see the specimen, being engaged elsewhere on the day in question. T h e staff attempted to identify it but the information at our disposal did not suffice, beyond the fact that it was obviously a foreign species and apparently a member of the finch, or some similar, group. Its condition was so offensive that it had to be destroyed." A regrettable termination to a most interesting importation, for which apologies were duly conveyed by the Society to M r . Lydamore.

SIZE of Rain-drops that varies from that of a Shilling to eighteenpence, as the young reporter printed, can hardly be considered as scientifically exact as the measurements of a recent meteorologist

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who found them by no means stable in this respect. He employed sheets of slate that could be instantly turned over in book form ; these were ruled in inch-squares and, after exposure to the drops, copied on paper that was similarly ruled. Three hundred sketches were thus made : some showing a mere circular spot; others, falling with force, were surrounded by extraneous splashes. Their size various from an almost invisible point to two inches in diameter : but the same-sized drops consist of a very variable amount of water. Some of the larger drops seemed hollow, as their centre showed a dry area. He also constructed diagrams exhibiting drops produced by mere Mist, floating along the ground; and the manner in which Snowflakes, when melted, wet the slates.

IN connection with the Oak riven by Lightning at Westleton (Trans, iii, 179) may be placed upon record a flash that slew a half-dozen Bullocks, shown as all lain upon their sides with legs and necks at fĂźll Stretch upon the ground, surrounding a fullyleaved tree (?Elm) of hardly a century's growth, displaying no trace of being riven, isolated in the middle of a pasture, from a photograph by Herman Biddell Esq., of Playford near Ipswich, uncle of our late Member (Trans, ii, p. xlvi). " The beasts were found lying under a tree near Bury St. Edmunds. I fancy the pulverization of the bark of a tree fĂźll of sap is the effect of the moisture being instantly converted into steam. I do not think we have any conception of the heat generated by the electric fluid being brought into contact with non-condueting matter.

Dead trees are never Struck by lightning ; at least, I never yet saw one," he writes (Strand Mag. xiii, 1897, p. 46). Unless one were very familiar with such a tree, a fresh lightning-stroke would be difficult to distinguish upon its desiccated wood.

IT is now very generally forgotten that Suffolk naturalists were honoured over a Century ago in the dear old author of " Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica. No. xxm. Containing the History and Antiquities of HAWSTEAD, in the County of Suffolk. London : mdcclxxxiv." by the famous botanist Sir James Smith's dedication to his son of his long-standard " The English Flora " : to " Sir Thomas Gery Cullum Bart., Fellow of the Royal, Antiquarian & Linnsean Societies / whose knowledge & love of Natural Science / entitle him to the respect of all / who follow the same pursuit / this work is inscribed / in grateful & affectionate remembrance / by / The Author."

OUR (unfossil) Conchologists will like to know that M. Locard in 1892 found the Mollusca of France to amount to 1500 marine and 1250 freshwater-cum-land species, of which 2750 total nearly 1200 are Mediterranean. At that period the Britishers were estimated at 550 marine and 150 non-marine kinds, but now this total is known to be 795, whereof 606 are marine (Trans.

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iv, 5). The rapidity with which new species to Science are being added from remote corners of the Earth to every group of Animals is truly appalling, and in direct ratio to the difficulty of their total computation. It took Prof. Dalla Torre eleven years to find the world possessed 50,000 described kinds of Hymenoptera in 1903 ; they are now estimated at no less than 150,000. Beetles would probably work out at just about as many.

Mollusca yet lacks any such census ; our friend Mr. J. R. le Brockton Tomlin of St. Leonards (in lit. 4 April 1941) teils us he has " a vast collection of probably 30,000 species." No Naturalist need ever be idle !

A few free tickets for entrance to the Zoological Gardens at Regents-park are available to Members upon application to the Hon. Secretary, who has many unwanted British Coleoptera, Macrolepidoptera and Diptera, and will be glad to hear from Members in need of them.—Six new Members were elected by the Officers in 1941.