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EDITORIAL. " That which they have donebut earnest of the things that they shall do."

IT has long been patent to all thinking men that modern Natural Science is now ramificated into too vast a congeries of subjects to be understanded of the people, with the result that the best one can do is to specialise on one or two particular brancbes, and maintain a mere bowing acquaintance with the rest. Our Society specialises upon Suffolk and all that is Suffolcian ; but we must not become too narrow. Meteorology is one of our distant acquaintances, except for Mr. Bland ; and how little we know it is amply demonstrated by the erroneous prognostications advanced in October 1933 that the following winter would be severe. Some kind of Buchan thirty-eight years' cycle was asserted to fall at that time, and pictures of the frozen Thames of 1895 were freely reproduced. How fulsome it all was, our memories of last winter plainly show.—In Austria ready-coloured wood is being grown by means of pigments. A hole of two inches' diameter is bored through the trunk of trees and filled, when its lower orifice has been plugged, with a liquid aniline die of various tints. The wood-cells absorb the die, which is thus carried in three years, or longer if the tree be large, to every part of it, including leaf-ribs; two or even three distinct hues will turn the wood pie-bald.—The eure of Malaria is now fully understood, though it has taken two thousand years to discover that germs are not exhaled by marshes. About 1680 quinine, extracted from Peruvian chinchone-bark, was given as an alleviant. About 1880 the French army-surgeon Laveran segregated a filamentous parasite in patients' blood-corpuscules ; but not tili thirty years ago did Sir Ronald Ross ascertain these parasites to pass a period of their existence in the bodies of Mosquitoes, e.g. our common Suffolk gnat Anopheles maculipennis, whose p r o b o s c i s - p u n c t u r e s convey them from a malarial person to infect a free subject.

Biology of the Seychelle Islands has been long known allied to that of Madagascar, rather than India. Last December the Murray oceanographic expedition, after three months' survey, reported a series of submerged hills that are supposed to r e p r e s e n t the lost Continent of Lemuria, once connecting Africa to India, and that the east-to-westerly floor of the Arabian Sea is a large land-area now submerged.—Last March Mr. Milligan in a Horniman Museum lecture on Animal Life in Great F o r e s t ^ rather aptly brought home the utilitarian idea that, lacking timber, man could not have evolved from the earlier forms of arborea anthropoid Apes: ' as without trees there would have been no

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Monkeys, we reach the conclusion that without trees there would be no Men.' Now, he added, we, like most upstarts, are busily breaking down the ladder by which we rose. Having destroyed trees, humanity will want them back ! What of those future miserable tree-" lovers waiting in the hidden years " ?

Not one of the innumerable descriptions of the vaunted Loch Ness monster has been at all adequate ; and we ventured to publish our conviction last January that it consists of nothing more formidable than a colony of Grey Seals : no confutation appeared. Düring May a more definite monster, in the shape of an Oar-fish extending to thirteen feet in length, turned up among the Salmon-fishers' nets at Findhorn in Moray.—The irrepressable German itch has produced something secreter than the war-pigeon. A Berlin apiarist indites minute missives and fixes them saddle-wise on the backs of his Bees, who convey them nearlyas swiftly as a bird canflyto the home-hives. A high percentage were safely delivered, with a vastly minimised risk in transport.—Our Transactions opened in 1929 with a note upon Weather Control. Such is no idle dream of the romancist, though " Science moves but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point," and is not to be hustled. Britain demonstrated twenty years ago that fog is dispersable by electricity, through a too costly process to be pursued. But devastating hailstorms are annually diverted by bombarding clouds with highly explosive rockets over the vineyards of Switzerland ; and a group of aeroplanes in a few minutes dispelled cumuli and produced rain above Washington by discharging streams of electrically-charged sandgrains, which experiment was equally efficacious in precipitating moisture over various adjacent towns.

In a lecture last August Dr. Susan Finnegan, who has named -Mites for our Society, produced a tropical Ethiopian Scorpion that had been captured by children in a garden near Slough ; she added these Arachnids were still swallowed medicinally in wine. « e ourseif were told in July last of a Locust's occurrence in the -New Forest at a Lyndhurst garage.—Elm Disease continues rife : many dead trees are to be seen about Beccles ; Mr. Powell reports an isolated one in Belstead ; and Mr. Platten is sure we shall " be sorry to hear that nearly all the huge Elms near Badley church are dying : a thousand pities ! "—To our article, at page 101 supra, may be added that John Hoy, who demolished Nayland-Stoke monastery and in 1829 erected the present house, emerges in the notonous " Murder of Maria Marten," etc.: London 1828, p. 80. «er slayer, William Corder of Polstead, went in 1827 " with Sam0uel SmithCorder one kilIed night and stole a pig, which Smith em^ ' belonging to a poor man in the <=mp oyment of Mr. Hoy, a gentleman living at Stoke which is on nage in the neighbourhood," presumably in the earlier house the monastery's site.

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EDITORIAL.

Local Anthropology will gain a welcome stimulus from the accessibility accorded Grimes Graves, just north of Brandon, by the residence of a custodian under H.M. Office of Works, which has just obtained their administration. Very few of the circa 350 pit-workings have yet been adequately excavated and it is well proposed to erect a small Museum in loco quo for the preservation of objects, such as red-deers' antlers employed as picks, that are found in this spot so fascinating to Ethnologists.

Replying to a question from us, its Hon. Secretary writes in November that T h e Suffolk Preservation Society " is glad to attempt to protect Trees, Flowers, anything that is Suffolk.

In fact, I personally am responsible for the clause in the ' Wild Flower Conservation Board Bill' where teachers in the village schools are requested to discontinue the practice of allowing scholars to compete for prizes in local flower shows by gathering huge bunches of wild Flowers which are judged for best grouping, number of specimens, rare specimens, etc. I myself have been judge in village flower shows, and am glad to think that this part of the country cannot be laid desolate by those little vandals, encouraged by so-called educated people."

At our Members' disposal are a limited number of admission tickets to the Zoological garden in Regents Park, London.

HABITS OF CALOSOMA B E E T L E S . â&#x20AC;&#x201D; O n e day in late May, I was sitting quite quietly, taking my lunch in Denny Wood, New Forest, when my attention was attracted by frequent flops of noise on the ground. Investigation showed that each of these flops was made by the fall of a Calosoma inquisitor, Linn., from some overhanging oak branch ; and further that each of these beetles was holding a moth-caterpillar of varying species in its jaws. In every case they remained on the ground only long enough to devour the larvae. As soon as ever this operation was accomplished, each scuttled off straight for the nearest oaktrunk and actively ascended it, presumably in search of more of the same provender. That perfect Calosoma; prey upon Lepidoptera is well known ; but I have not heard of this peculiarity, of voluntarily casting themselves to earth in order to c o n s u m e their victims. All were of one species ; and I have never had Comdr. Walker's good fortune in this wood of finding (EMM. 1906, p. 159) C. sycophanta, Linn., which is admitted to be British in the 1930 Catalogue, though regarded as no more than an occasional visitant by Fowler.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;J. W. CORDER, 1 Ashbrook Terrace, Sunderland, D u r h a m : v.v. in loco quo, 4 July 1934.