Recollections of a Suffolk Naturalist in the early days of the Society

RECOLLECTIONS OF A SUFFOLK NATURALIST IN THE EARLY DA YS OF THE SOCIETY E.

P.

WlLTSHIRE

I was nineteen years old and already a keen lepidopterist when the Society was founded in 1929. My first year at Jesus College, Cambridge, was already drawing to a close, and usually I returned for the vacations to my home, 118 Lowestoft R o a d , Gorleston-on-Sea. My neighbour there, John Moore, was also a keen lepidopterist and a few streets away lived e h e s t e r Doughty then aged fifty-nine, a native of Martlesham, and a member of Claude Morley's founding team. He was an all-round naturalist but knew all the lepidoptera of the county.

Since the age of thirteen I had had the guidance of these two older naturalists and also of that of four invaluable books: the three volumes of Richard South, the incomparable first edition of the Butterflies and Moths of the British Isles (Warne) and also W. Furneaux's Single volume: Butterflies and Moths (British) (1919).

For a beginner there was much to be found right on the outskirts of Gorleston itself and in our gardens. Farmland began on the western side of the railway cutting at the end of our garden, and the view from my room, top floor back, was of a typical Suffolk agricultural landscape; cornfields, hedgerows and trees, to the blue western horizon. The transfer of the population of Great Yarmouth's overcrowded rows, partly b o m b e d out in World War II, to these acres, was still undreamt of. The eyed hawkmoth caterpillars, Smerinthus ocellatus (L.), were found almost annually on our apple trees; any local poplar or willow would provide those of the poplar hawk, Laothoe populi (L.), and the puss-moth, Cerura vinula (L.); and the lime-trees of Gorleston streets furnished larvae of the buff-tip, Phalera bueephala (L.); on dark evenings in D e c e m b e r and January, the hedgerows along the lane west of the farm near Elmhurst provided winter moths, Oporophtera brumata (L.), and early moths, Theria primaria (Haw.), and on sunny April afternoons the same hedgebanks would provide the colourful drinker caterpillars of Philudoria potatoria (L.) and the oak eggar, Lasiocampa quercus (L.), not to forget the occasional läppet, Gastropacha quereifolia (L.). On a bicycle I would reach places somewhat further afield, such as the Hopton cliffs, Burgh Castle and Fritton; Trans. S u f f . Nat. Vol.

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occasionally, we even biked to Rendelsham, where my aunt Louise L o m b a r d was the rector's wife, and such Norfolk localities as Caister and Ormesby: at the first of these the California sand-hills produced sand-darts, Agrotis ripae ( H ü b n . ) , and other coastal moths, while at the latter Dick and Ken Bagnall-Oakley, then at Hemsby, showed me, in 1925, the Lady Broad where the swallow-tail, Papilio machaon (L.), caterpillars were then to be obtained. O n e took a boat at the Sportsman's A r m s ('a Shilling an hour, two bob an 'alf day, and four bob as long as you loike") and rowed through a low bridge into Ormesby Broad proper and past the eel-trap at the entrance of Lady Broad.

T h r o u g h Chester Doughty 1 met Ted Ellis whose parents lived near his house in Gorleston and who about that time joined the staff of the Castle Museum, Norwich. Already known locally as a keen and knowledgeable young naturalist, his national fame came years later after he had become prominent as a writer, first in the Eastern Daily Press and later on television. Gorleston was then officially in Suffolk but its proximity to the county border inevitably led to closer relations with Norfolk than were possible for the Ipswich group.

In 1929 I needed little persuasion from Doughty and Moore to join the newly-instituted society. Moore was a solicitor still practising in Y a r m o u t h , while Doughty was a retired solicitor; being a bachelor he had been able to retire earlier than some could. His leisure time was devoted to fishing and the pursuit of natural history. H e wore tweeds, knee-breeches and a squashy tweed hat, and smoked a pipe; he vvould don a smart suit only on special occasions, such as his weekly dinner with an old lady-friend who lived near-by. His blue, somewhat watery eyes, pale thin hair, pale straggly moustache and large nose, redder even than his cheeks, and moderate embonpoint, are immortalised in the plate accompanying his obituary in Vol. 4, part 2 of the Proceedings of the year 1939. I used to call after breakfast and find him sitting in an arm-chair of his parlour before the fire; his housekeeper had not yet removed the remains of his breakfast. His breeches would probably still be u n b u t t o n e d at the knee, he would be doing crossword puzzles and puffing at his pipe. A r o u n d him was the world he had created: a bookshelf füll of books on birds, fishes, insects; two mahogany glass-doored cabinets, and an enormous cupboard twelve feet long and four feet high, füll of cases of insects, shells, and birds' feathers ranged in neat order in large Trans. S u f f . Nat. Vol. 18 part 1.

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albums. On top of this magnificent piece of furniture was an assortment of Cyanide bottles, glass-bottomed pill-boxes and breeding-cages. His conversation was entertaining, his attitude invariably kind, though his departures were occasionally abrupt. In winter, especially, he was a familiar figure fishing on Gorleston pier with his friend Mr. Ernest Larkman, another bachelor, or Walking along the beach where perhaps dead sea-fowl might have been washed up in the previous night's storm. In the summer he often went fishing at Fritton.

In 1929 together with Moore he had discovered Webb's wainscot moth, Archanara sparganii (Esper), breeding on the Waveney shortly above Beccles, a more northerly British record for this species than any hitherto made, thanks to which I myself was able to find its pupa there on 19th September, from which a fine female hatched a few days later.

Through my Cambridge contacts (but they are another story!) I had seen A. E. Tonge's list of desiderata for lepidoptera ova for photography, and in June of the same year had been able to send him eggs of the lyme-grass moth, Photedes elymi (Tr.), the sand-dart and other coastal moths, which were published eventually in Stokoe and Stovin's T h e Caterpillars of British Moths' (Warne).

T h e pine hawkmoth, Hyloicus pinastri (L.), was at that time still a Suffolk speciality, only known from one or two woods near Woodbridge. It could most easily then be found at Aldringham, where on 16th and 19th July 1929 I took three on pine trunks. My uncle, the rector of Rendlesham, was dumb-founded, having considered it an exclusivity of his parish. But as the Society's recorder of echinoderms he had not kept detailed notes of its true distribution in Suffolk.

W h e t h e r 1 had already met Claude Morley at that time I cannot recall, but by 1937 I had certainly visited him in his house and 'museum' at Monks Soham. By 1936 the pine-hawk had established itself in Dorset and the New Forest, as reported in Vol. 3 (2) p. 191 by Morley, who stated its Suffolk ränge was then 'from Deben to Easton Broad'.

Years later we found it had spread further north, for my diary shows that on 24th June 1951 I found three females resting low down on pine-trunks at Fritton, close to the Waveney marshes. Having taken the moth to light among the Cedars of Lebanon I did not require these but Morley was happy to take them, and a short note appeared in Vol. 7 (3), p. 133.

T h e Cedars of Lebanon? I should perhaps explain that at the end of my four years at Cambridge I joined the Consular Trans. S u f f . Nat. Vol. ISpart 1.

73 service, departing for the Middle East in autumn 1932. I continued to subscribe and receive the Society's magazine, thus following the doings of my old friends and even contributing the occasional article, e.g. 1938 Vol. 4 (1), p.76, and Vol. 5 (3), p.133, imparting perhaps an exotic whiff to its East Anglian mixture, strongly redolent of Morley's own personality and tastes. My Suffolk activities ineluctably declined after my departure, but most of the persons mentioned above appear in the plate in Vol. 2 (1); my Rendlesham aunt, Louise Lombard and her sister, my mother (front row extreme right), together with Rose Morley add the female charm in a group who posed at Lowestoft on Ist June 1932. I was at that date involved in the grand examinations on which my subsequent life depended. All the Society's stalwarts appear in the group, Morley wearing his familiar butterfly tie and panama hat.

Whenever possible, during my home leaves, I revisited old Suffolk haunts. Thus in April 1935 I found spring noctuid larvae at night in the woods and carrs of Aldeby and Beiton, and on the Hopton and Corton cliffs. My aunt's decease was noted in the 1936 Proceedings, Vol. 3 (2). In winter 1938-9 I was on leave again but did no collecting; but on 24th January I happened to be in the Norwich Castle Museum and chatting with Ted Ellis when he received over the phone the shocking news of Chester's sudden death. Doughty had ceased to be the Society's Treasurer a year or two earlier. My mother and 1 thus attended his funeral on the 27th January, as described in his obituary notice cited above.

In 1944 I returned to war-stricken England to recuperate my health, staying with my brother at Somerton, Norfolk; 1 did not see my Suffolk friends on this visit, and next returned in 1948. My brother was now at Herringfleet and I stayed there a bit, but London contacts more and more kept me from long stays in Suffolk. In 1951 however, on my next leave, I stayed at Gunton and revisited most of my old haunts, particularly Fritton, in Company with Morley, as already reported; I recaptured Photedes elymi on the beach at Corton and N. Lowestoft and caught a number of marsh moths on Herringfleet marsh. I also visited Ted Ellis, now established and becoming famous at his Wheatfen abode in Norfolk, where he showed me the large copper butterfly caterpillars, Lycaena dispar (Haw.), race batavus (Ob.), full-grown on water-dock; these were of course the introduced stock whose story at Surlingham is told by Ellis himself in his book "The Broads', RECOLLECTIONS OF A SUFFOLK NATURALIST

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p.184 (Collins, N.N., 1965). Later that same year Claude Morley died, as reported in the moving and appreciative obituary notice in Vol. 7 (3), lxxvii, which was accompanied by an excellent portrait plate. He and Moore appear in action with field apparatus in a plate in Vol. 3 (2).

I will not pursue the tale of my visits to Suffolk into more recent years, but will mention that my brother's present residence at Fritton has enabled me at long intervals to entomologise on the same warren whither I cycled to moth as a boy; it is now dignified by the title "Waveney Forest' but many of the creatures, such as the emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia (L.), have survived the transformation. And I will also mention in conclusion that on 14th July 1975 I visited the Norwich Castle Museum and found that John Moore's collection, and my own collection made in the British Isles up to 1932, were safely stored there in Company with those of Bishop Whittingham, L. H. L. Irby, the Rev. Marsh and other collections that had come through the years and the wars unscathed.

E. P. Wiltshire, C.B.E., Wychwood, High Road, Cookham,

F.R.E.S., Berks. SL6

9JS.

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