On the Acquisition of Fritillary Field

Above: MRS. FITZROY, MR. SIMPSON, MR. LINGWOOD, AI RS. WARD, MR. RICHARDSON AND THE HON SECRETARY. Belozc: MRS. MORLEY, DR. F. H. HAINES, MRS. CRITTEN &MISS PIPE. SOMI OF THE MEMBERS AT WLSSINGTON MLLL, AUGUST 1 ''SS.

TRANSACTIONS. ACQUISITION OF FRITILLARY FIELD. THE Suffolk Preservation Society does not appear to concern itself with Natural objects, so it feil to the Suffolk Naturalists' Society to preserve a meadow near Debenham from the plough that threatened to exstirpate the local Fritillary Flowers and rare Orchids which had been its immemorial denizens. Our second Object is " the Preservation of Flora of the County," so the action taken feil well within the sphere of this Society ; and it has been ably carried through by our energetic Phanerogamic Recorder, Mr. Francis Simpson of Ipswich Museum.

He approached the owner of the Fritillary Field in so diplomatic a manner that the latter veered from scorn of such weeds to the position of a donor towards the fund our Society raised for the land's purchase. This was achieved by means of a grant from our funds, backed by contributions from some dozen individual Members (cf. Proc. June & October 1938), headed

by Miss Dulcie L. Smith of Giffards Hall in Wickhambrook, who found five-and-twenty pounds and guaranteed a like sum.

Because this scientific Society is protected by its Rule vi. from the bother of owning property, whereof (like the making of bocks) is no end, the Fritillary Field was handed over before the close of 1938 to the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, which itself had voted ten pounds towards the acquisition and will maintain it for the use and benefit of all Naturalists, with preference for those of the Suffolk Naturalists' Sccietv.

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