News for Naturalists 5 Part 1

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NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. T h e Nightingale has a lyre o f gold, the L a r k ' s is a clarion call, And the Blackbird plays but a boxwood flute though I love h i m best of all.

—Henley.

SOME thirty years ago we well remember our Diptera Recorder's first advent at the British Museum, where now he holds the world's Beetles in the hollow of his hand—or brain ; but we bow to his recollection of our original rencontre a decade earlier, when Sparke and he chanced upon Chitty and us, all complete with net and posh-pot, in Tuddenham Fen, Suffolk. Doubtless he was Sparke's ' young friend ' who took one of two Swallow-tails there in 1901 (Memoir i, 117). But, as Sir Walter Scott considered anecdotage worse even than dotage, turn we to this same Dr. Gloyne Blair's comprehensive address, ending his two-year's presidency of the Royal Entomological Society (Proc. 1942, 42), on ' Some Aspects of Parasitism in Insects.' Science is so detailed and exacting nowadays that few men could have covered so vast an area : Entomology is ill-appreciated by the restricted British naturalist, but even he gains some vague inkling of the interassociation between both different Insects and Insects with other Animals, e.g. Bots on Cattle and Deer. Here we find the whole systematically mapped and just enough added details to whet interest for fuller ones. Due economic paramountcy is accorded the devastating Ichneumonidoe, without whose nicely-balancing parasitism their victims among the Spiders, Mites, Chelifers, Millepeds and every Order of Insects, would rapidly defoliate the world. We shall be glad to lend a copy to any Member interested.

MALARIAL Mosquitoes are no respecters of nationality : the best Britishers are no more immune from their punctures than the worst Germans. Four years ago some of the latter had perfected a preventive Compound from synthetic chemicals that were protected by patent rights. War swept such rights aside ; and now our marvellously precise machines produce innumerable tablets every hour. These the War Office distributes all round the tropics to our troops, who avoid infection by their constant doses. Of Quinine from Cinchona-trees, the only alternative remedy, ninety per centum of the world's supply then emanated from Java, whence it would be hard to obtain it just at present.

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MYCROFT HOLMES, who ' was the Colonial Office,' possessed to a greater extent than his more celebrated brother Sherlock, the exact limits of whose knowledge are detailed at cap. ii of A Study in Scarlet, the quite impossible omniscience of delightful Dr. Thorndyke. To interest the British public in really logical though fictional processes, Conan Doyle was wise to descend to the fascinating if doubtful medium of crime. Copyists have been Legion and the best of them despite his distinctly inferior diction, never fails to make his points. He draws, unlike Sir Arthur, largely upon Biology for attaining reasoned results and, in the thousand pages of Thorndyke's " Famous Cases," six instances stand out as interesting to every Naturalist:—A man, found dead in an ordinary meadow-ditch in Bucks, is proved to have been drowned in the dreary cattle-marshes of Essex by the presence of Horn-weed [Zannichellia palustris, L.] in his hand, and in his stomach both Greater Duckweed [Lemna polyrrhiza, L.] and the snail-shell Planorbis nautileus [L., now called crista, L. : Trans, iv, 10], all absent from the Bucks site. Buried treasure is localised on the Thames towing-path at Hammersmith by the discovery in a handful of grass of another shell, Clausilia biplicata, Mont., which occurs nowhere eise near London ; but has been erroneously recorded from both Bury and Melton (Proc. Suffolk Inst. Archaeol.

1891, 275). By matching the contained fossil Foraminifera with pictures of them in Warnford's Monograph, smears of Chalk on a coat are found to have originated at Gravesend. Atropine poison is traced, through the victim's consumption of Rabbits and Pigeons with which it is innocuous, to the Belladonna-plants that both had been intentionally fed upon. And Gold or Platinum is discriminated from Lead by its mere distinctive weight. Quite the best sketch of this kind"is the ' Sower of Pestilence,' logically showing how Body-lice carry Typhus and Black Rat-fleas disseminate Plague (cf. Trans, "ii, 201). The whole goes to prove (p. 503) that criminals are unlearned in Natural History.

WHY, with paid museum-curators up and down the country, the Sanitary Inspector of Godalming in Surrey should have applied to our Suffolk Society for enlightenment of a local matter is obscure. However, on 28 August last he sent specimens of the parasitic Fly Pteromalus deplanatus, Nees (Morley's Catalog.

Brit. Chalcididae, pub. by Brit. Museum 1910, p. 49) for identification. Meanwhile the silly had been fumigating it with hic and proposed spraying it with hoc, simply because its vast numbers were causing annoyance to a Colonel there, whose windows it was obscuring ! Such is the species' known habit since 1835, especially noticed by us in a Bug-hunter's house near Boxmoor in Herts during late Sept. 1901 (EMM. 1919, 13). The Flies appear to assemble from outside for the sole purpose of hibernation and disperse in the spring, though no host is yet ascertained and it is

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quite possible that they may slay Death Watch beetles, Anobium domesticum, or some equally destructive household pest : in any case, they are friends and not foes. For means of riddance, cf.

Trans, iv, p. 77.

Historie Britain emerged from obscurity as the Tin Islands, to those first able to record such things : the tin of King Solomon's temple is reputed to have here originated. A Century ago six hundred mines, some 1700 feet in depth, employed thousands of hands in Cornwall. Then easily-worked alluvial tin was found in Burma, and Cornish-men went to work i t : later more, in Malaya, in Nigeria and Bolivia : none of them handy as the Cassiterides. This old locality yet retains ample supplies of the metal so essential to our armaments. The ledges or ' stopes ' are still drilled six feet, and their tin blasted from the granite matrix, in the few mines still worked : ridiculously few.

It will be historically interesting to here recall that, five-andthirty years ago, your Hon, Secretary considered (in Suffolk County Handbook 1907, p. 68) ' the Natural History of Suffolk as a whole leaves a very great deal to be desired, and many of the groups of its Fauna have at present reeeived little or no attention.

It is quite impossible for a few isolated students to investigate the multifarious inhabitants of the woods, fens, meadows, and seashores of a county comprising fifteen hundred square miles ; the only possible method of doing so is the formation of a very much needed " Suffolk Naturalists' Society," whose members will work at the various branches of the county's Fauna individually and so gradually form one homogeneous and comprehensive account of all the denizens—whether small or large,from the Roedeer to the Reedwarbler, from the Slowworm to the Slug—which are to be found between the Waveney and Stour. How soon good results may accrue from systematic working will be seen when it is stated that up to some twelve years ago only about 500 different kinds of Insects (excepting Moths) could have been instanced as inhabiting Suffolk ; now the total of the different kinds which have actually been caught and named stands at 6,038, or nearly half of all those belonging to Great Britain. Dr. Wratislaw of Bury considered ours the " best of entomological counties," and Dr. Sharp ot the Cambridge University Museum, thinks it the " faunistically richest county north of the Thames." But why should one county contain more Animals than another ? Because plants grow upon certain supersoils only ; the supersoils differ in relation to the geological formations, which are very varied with us ; the majority of Animals, using the word in its broadest sense, are herbivorous and feed very largely on one kind of Plant only.

Further, few counties can boast such a combination of fen land,

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chalky hills, broad wooded tracks, salt marshes, and seaboard, each of which shelters peculiar species of Animals, as is to be found in Suffolk.'

Our Member, M r . Frank Compton Stanley has sailed for the West African Coast in search of Goliath Beetles et hoc genus omne. Send he returns without misadventure !

So vast is becoming the number of books upon our island Natural History alone that the new Association for the Study of Systematics in Relation to General Biology has this year issued, as their first publication, a " Bibliography of Key Works for the Identification of the British Fauna and Flora " ; and claims it to be no more than " an attempt to provide guidance to the literature required for accurately naming the Plants and Animals of the British Isles. It is extremely difficult to find out quickly what works are necessary for identification of any given group in this country. Reliance has to be placed on papers scattered through scientific Journals and other works. T o discover what papers are best to commence with is not an easy matter. . . Local Natural History Societies should find the work helpful in the Flora and Fauna of their own areas." Adlard and Son Ltd., Dorking ; nearly 30 of the 113 pages review Insect papers.

T h e observer of Bombylius Bee-fly at our Trans, iv, 124, evidently wrote without his book, or rather its up-to-date version.

For already in 1919 ( T r . Ent. Soc. Lond., p. 228), B. major, there miscalled B. minor, had been found to be parasitic upon the Bee Andrena Clarkella, Kirby, and the species termed B. major was really B. discolor. Our Diptera Recorder makes these corrections and recounts ( E M M . 1920, p. 201) his own breeding that year of the true B. minor, L., f r o m cells of another Bee Collectes Daviesana in an Isle of Wight sand-pit, wherein he also found pupa-cases of B. discolor, doubtless parasitic upon this or an allied wild Bee. Linne's species is unknown in Suffolk, where Phthiria pulicaria was first discovered to be British in 1813 but has not been seen since John Curtis took many in 1833 at flowers of Compositae on the Covehithe denes, that remain much as they were then, but have often been vainly searched for it during recent years.

T h o u g h it be hardly NEWS, our Geologists may like to bear in mind the latest computation of the sixteen main Ages of the Earth's crust. T h e first figures give the number of million years each took to deposit; the second figures give the depth in feet of the deposit in Britain, since the earliest and lowest or Archaean Age which was of vast but unknown duration (Brewster Smith's 1926 ' World of the Past,' 65) :—(1) Late pre-Cambrian Age 4 | , 19A t h o u s a n d ; (2) Cambrian 2 | , 12000; (3) Ordovician 2, 15000;

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(4) Silurian 2, 14450 ; (5) Devonian 21, 20000 ; (6) Carboniferous 6 , 2 2 8 0 0 ; (7) Permean 1, 3000 ; (8) Triassic 1, 5750 ; (9) Jurassic 1, 4300; (10) Cretaceous 3, 4550; (11) Eocene 2, 1800; (12) Oligocene I i , 850 ; (13) Miocene 21, nil ; (14) Pliocene 1, 300 ; (15) Pleistocene and (16, Age of Man) Holocene 1, nil. Totalling 331 million ycars, and terra firma below us of rather over 124 thousand feet: which are the basic facts of all geologic knowledge.

The entire biography of Carl Linne, the ' father of Natural History,' is well known ; but vve have never met with any detailed account of his friend and successor Johannes Christianus Fabricius (1742-1806) of Kiel, beyond the probably false legend, fornierly current at the British Museum and presumably there handed down from the time of his personal visits to Bloomsbury, that he looked upon the wine when it was red and never slumbered soberly ! Kindlier is the account of him written in August 1787 by the entomological retired wine-merchant, Mr. William Jones (1750-1818) of 10 Manor-street in Chelsea : " Fabricius is in London and much wishes to see you, but will certainlv leave us before your return. He is going through mv drawings [of foreign Rhopalocera] to correct, amend, and add to a Mantissa that he has now in hand ; yet I have more than he will be able to accomplish in the time he has limited to stay. 1 am sorrv you are from home for your own sake ; he is a man that must please : open, free, easy, candid, unaffected : in short / like him and thinkyou must " (Lady Smith's 1832 Memoir of late Sir J. E. Smith, M.D., i, 264). Very nearly, Fabricius came to Suffolk . . . (Freeman).

That Papilio Machaon is no new immigrant to Britain is shown by the Journal of old Drurv (now preserved in Oxford Museum), who on 9 June 1764 found at " Wamham in Sussex, Swallowtails very plentiful in that Country -the first brood being nearly past—on the 12th caught one on Leigh hill but very ragged."

Wamham isjust north of Horsham and west of St. Leonards Forest.

No class of our literature has changed so basically, though imperceptibly, as the most populär press : the great oi polloi have become rational. Novels of 1880 are now, and were then intended to be no more than, pleasant reading pour passer le temps ; by 1927 we would fain both enjoy and learn together. Hence in ' A Certain Dr. Thorndyke ' of the latter year, by Mr. R. A. Freeman who keenly observed in travelling through Ashanti, though no Naturalist, emerge such glimpses of first-hand west African biology as :—'The sun was high as they watched Porpoises [Phoccena communis, Cuv.] plaving round the becalmed ship, or Portugese Men-of-war [.Physalia physalis, L. : Trans, i. 79] gliding imperceptibly past on their rainbow-tinted floats ; they peered down into the dark water alongside, where the Noctilucse [Ar. miliaris, phosphorescent Protozoan : Trans, ii, 78] shone like

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s u b m a r i n e stars, and shoals of Fish darted away before t h e pursuing Dolphin [Delphinus delphis, L.] with lurid flashes of phosphorescent light, below the constellations ' that blazed in the velvet blue.' At davvn land was in sight, that is there was an appearance as if many Entomological pins had been stuck u n t o the sea-horizon in irregulär groups : viewed f r o m the fore-top, however, this p h e n o m e n o n resolved itself into a n a r r o w band of lowlying shore, dotted with Coco-nut Palms [Cocos nucifera, L.], the characteristic aspect of the Bight of Benin. H e strode away along the beach, Walking as far as was possible on the wet sand to avoid the attacks of the Chiggers, sand-fleas [Chigoes, Sarcopsyllus penetrans, Westw., here imported f r o m the Antilles], which infest the ' aeolian sands ' above the tide-marks. At AdafFia in that Bight, the village sank to rest and the sounds, that came in t h r o u g h the open window, were those of heast and bird and insect : Cicadas [Platypleura divisa, G e r m . & P. brems, Walk. ?], and Crickets [Gryllus bimaculatus, D e G . ] chirred and c h i r r u p e d out in the darkness, the bark of the Genet [musky C'ivet, Viverra genetta, L.] and the snuffling m u t t e r of prowling Civets [V. civetta, Schreb.] came f r o m without the Compound, while far away the long-drawn melancholy cry of the Hysena [//. striata, L . or H. vulgaris, L,] could be heard. H e looked round his room : a huge hairy Spider [Ctenus sp. ?] was spread out on the wall as if displayed in a collector's cabinet and, above him, a brown Cockroach of colossal proportions [Blabera gigantea, L . ] twirled his long antennae thoughtfully ; the low, b u m p y ceiling formed a promenade for two pallid goggle-eyed Lizards [Podarcis sp. ?] who strolled about defiant of the laws of gravity, picking u p an occasional M o t h or soft-shelled Beetle [perhaps Lycus semiamplexus, M u r r . ] as they went ; and presently an enormous Fruit Bat [Pteropus ?Edzcardsi, Beof.], with a head like that of a fox-terrier, blundered in through the open window and flopped about the room in noisv panic, for several minutes, before it could f i n d its way out. At length the lamp was extinguished and soon, despite the hollow boom of the surf, the whistle of multitudinous Bats and piping of Mosquitoes [? Stegomyia fasciata, Fab.], he feil asleep. On this coast, the universal sand that was varied by only the black lagoon m u d [Alluvium], everlasting Coco-nut Palms chattering incessantly in the breeze, and bald horizon of the unpeopled sea, had begotten vearning for change of scene : the sight of veritable trees with leaves, growing in actual earth, and of living things beyond Sea-birds and amphibious denizens of the beach. After a couple of hours' marching inland stränge Birds, here unseen in the bush, piped queer little Georgian chants, while others, silent but gorgeous of plumage—scarlet Cardinais [not Loxia Virginiana ! ] and rainbowhued S u n - b i r d s [Cinnyris afra, Cuv.]—disported themselves visibly a m o n g the foliage. Little striped Barbary M i t e [Mus Üarbarus, L.] gambolled beside the nine-inch track, and great

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blue-bodied Lizards with scarlet heads and tails [n.n ] perched on thc tall Ant-hills [Termites'], that rose on all fides like pink [l'barrack-stove' ml of Aden] monuments, and nodded their heads defiantly. It was a new world : thc b n g h t pink soll of this main land, thc crowded bush, buttressed forest 1 recs uncouth Baobabs [Adansonia digitata, L., langest Afncan tree low, but trunk attaining in Senegal 93 ft. diam representmg 5000 years growth (BOP. viii, 192)] with the.r colossal trunks and absurdly dwarfed branches, and a troop of Dog-faced Monkeys [?Rib-nosed Baboons, Cynocephalus sp.] who had estabhshed a modus vivendi with the native villagers of the pink-walled Hamlet In c Quittah Fort Compound, a supercilious-looking Pelican [. vvhite Pelecanus. None are supposed to occur south of Sierra Leone] waddled, and a Fish Fagle [Falco ossifragus L ] on a corner-perch uttered a loud yell, with an assemblage ot Storks [Cuoma alba Beh 1 Coots [Fulica ? atra, L.], Rails [Rallus ? aquaheus, L.] and other birds, which were strolling about at large in the quadrangle.

Bv the river, the voices of night were peaceful : thc continuous chirr of the countless Cicadas, punetuated by deep-toned hollow whistles of great Fox Bats flapping slowly across thc water ; thc long-drawn erv or staccato titter of far-away Hyaenas, and thc startling shriek of a Potto [the Kinkajou, arboreal carnivorous mammal, Cercolcptcs sp.] in one of the lofty trees. 1 he sounds seemed eloquent of utter solitude, of a vast and unseen wilderness with its mysterious population of bird and beast h% ing on, its stränge primeval life unchanged, trom the days when the world was young. " I n July last I was fortunate enough to catch thc most remarkable aberration of Argynnis aglaia which I have ever seen. All the wings of the insect, which is a S , are yellow, not brown, while the usual black markings of the upper side are rcplaced by similar silver markings, which are very bright in certa.n l.ghts. It is in splendid condition, save for a slight congen.tal mark towards the centre of the right hind wing. F. B. Newnham ; Church Stretton (Entom 1917, 207). For this rum freak of Nature, some misguided Butterflologist ' and his money were soon parted to the extent of 37/. (London paper, 22 Oct. 1942) when it was put up to auetion on 21 October by M M . Glendin,ng & Co. in London.

Mercenarv collectors must look for silver on the upper side ! ' One does get marvellous stories sometimes,' writes onc of our Members last June : ' Yesterday a fly was shown me that I was assured, had bred from a caterpillar of Cucullia lychn.Us [Moth Memoir, 391, which had spun thc accompanying cocoon. Actuaüy ,e so-called parasite was a Sawfly Abia sencea [Trans, in, 19], the ««s ^ . Sc abious ,.

Li. so-caneu su . uaiasnc i . , . —, j„ 1 r • n,-v k.hit : the cocoon its own, and the larva had fed on Dev.ls-blt Scabious :

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the captor had merely misidentified the larva ! ' T w o equally amusing howlers j u m p to our own m e m o r y : (1) At a fßll Meeting of the Royal Entomological Society in Chandos Square some years ago, an object was exhibited as a curious Aphis [Trans, ii, 145] ; it was passed round in the ordinary way, when I recognised it as nothing but a cast nymph-skin of the a b u n d a n t F o g - h o p p e r Acocephalus nervosus, Sehr., belonging to quite a different g r o u p of H o m o p t e r a ; and I was interested to see it complete its tour of the entire Meeting without challenge. About t h e same time 1 was busily working one day at my table in the British M u s e u m , when (2) a visitor, who did not pretend t o k n o w m u c h about insects presented one of the Assistants on the permanent staff, since dead, with what the latter pronounced to be the large green Grasshopper Tettigonia viridissima, L. ; more for the sake of a second opinion than in any doubt, the latter sought my confirmation, which I regretted to be impossible, for the Insect was a slender red I c h neumon, Ophion luteus, I,.—Can you beat it ?

It is good to hear that the rare W a t e r - b u g , Apelochirus .x-stivalis, Fab., var. M o n t a n d o n i , Hrv., which coyly evaded all M r .

James E d w a r d s ' life-long search, has at length recurred in Norfolk and, moreover, at or near its 1874 locality ' Costessey.' It is indigenous b u t extremely local at Worcester, Bath, Oxford and in September 1937 t u r n e d u p at Parley in Hants, which county's review by o u r M e m b e r the late M r . H . P. Jones lacked it in 1930.

Last J u n e M r . E. T . Daniels happened to see one in the W e n s u m above Norwich ( E n t o m . 165) ; in all eleven speeimens were there noted, of which only four could be captured in a j a m - j a r or fingers.

Here we get a novel lead f r o m Norfolk !

May I make a suggestion to our Lepidopterist M e m b e r s , who contribute to the Observations : M a n y of these ' observations ' are really nothing more than lists of captures, doubtless of interest to the captors but of no really scientific value. I submit that M e m b e r s should use their powers of Observation more, and place on record what they have noted of interest. T h e text books on M o t h s are sadly deficient in recording habits and peculiarities of the various species. In fact, T u t t ' s is the only book of any use in this respect. Asinstances of what really are useful ' observations ' I would indicate those in the last Transactions (pp. 255-66) of Bicolorana, Luctuosa, Fritillaries' ovipositing, H y p e r a n t h u s and the Machaon larva. T h e occurrence of rarities and aberrations must, of course, be inserted ; and the distribution of such Butterflies as C - a l b u m , Sibylla and Edusa is of great value. But there has been a tendency of recent years for M e m b e r s to schedule the smnual work in certain places, differing little f r o m season to stason. O u r Editor can publish only such contributions as he

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receives, and it would surely assist him as well as other fieldworkers if scientific, and not merely personal, matter were subinitted for his insertion, writes M R . J O H N L. M O O R E , the Society's First Ordinary Member. And he is quite right in emphasising matters of paramount importance ; but publication of even presumably ubiquitous Insects would appeal to him if he had compiled our Lepidopterous ' Memoir,' where the relative frequency of species in south compared with north Suffolk often stand out in surprising divergency, by no means always attributable to the intensity of attention accorded particular districts.

Fourteen new Members have been elected by your Officers in 1942, only five in both of the preceding years. Our Membership of some 270 is satisfactory, in such troublous times.