News for Naturalists 5 Part 2

94

NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.

NEWS

FOR

NATURALISTS.

' T h e r e was never a king like Solomon, e'en sincc the World heyan : Yet Solomon talked to a Butterfly, as a man wouid talk ro a man.'

Is any bibliography of M r Alfred Bell's publications extant ?

W e believe he wrote a good many scattered and quite shorl papers, on Suffolk fossils of various kinds, that ought to be tabulated ; and, in searching for other things, we have recently happened upon one of them " On some new or little-known Shells &c. of the Crag Formations " (Annais & Mag. Natural History, ser. 4, vol. vi, Sept. 1870, pp. 213-7). Despite its halting English, the Mollusca enumerated in it form a valuable contribution to local palasontology ; and of such is the entire article, for the ' &c' comprises merely three Echinoderms and a single Polyzoon.

Eighty-seven Mollusca, only 24* Pelecypods, are named : 36 of them new to our Crags and the rest [including Helix (Trichia) hispida, L. !] merely unknown thitherto in that Stratum of them here indicated. Among the former category five Gastropoda purport to be new to science, i.e. Melampus fusiformis, Wood MS. ; Admete Reedii, Bell ; Buccinopsis pseudo-Dalei [ugh !], Wood M S . ; (Capulus ?) incertus, Bell; and Actason Etheridgii, Bell.

Those ' new to the Crag fauna will be figured shortly ' : were they, and where ?

Our M e m b e r M r Dennis Collings of the Singapore Museum (Trans, v, p. lxxiii), like all good Britishers there, volunteered for military Service when Japan entered this lunatic war ; and for long his fate caused great anxiety after the fall of that fortalice.

At the end of last August his parents, our learned President and Mrs. D. W. Collings, were very relieved to receive a holograph communication from him : " Now I am in a Japanese prisoner-ofwar camp in Java. My health is excellent: I am, in fact, all right. T h e Japanese treat the prisoners well, so pray do not worry about me and never feel uneasy," than which nothing could be more heartening but liberation. We sincerely congratulate Mr. Collings upon Coming so swimmingly through a very hectic experience.

TUE Scarce Swallow-tail is a common Butterfly in both May and July from Paris and central Europe to North Africa and the Altais of central Asia : it appears to have formerly inhabited *Of these Ostrea cristata, Born ; Leda hyperborea, Lov. ; and Necera arctica, Sars. ; were omitted from our ' H a n d - l i s t ' (Trans, ii, 259).

NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.

95

England but is now extinct, says W . F. Kirby in 1883. Indeed, all our very early butterflologists, such as Mouffet 1634, Ray 1710 and Petiver 1717, had no doubt of its occurrence ' in Anglia ' ; and many specimens in old collections were alleged to be indigenous, though its annals here are ' short and simple ' like the poor's.

After a silence tili 1789, Berkenhout describes it as British, found rarely in woods, where it visits flowers in the daytime ; though any other ' testimony of its discovery in England is now forgotten ' (Donovan 1797, pl. 204). T h e n came a revival : Miss Jermyn of Ipswich in 1827 knew it from woods in Beds [taken by Dr. Abbot circa 1799] and the New Forest, taken by M r . Hawkins ; and Westwood in 1840 does not question it, but in 1855 entertains doubt of the Revd. F. W . Hope's capture in Shropshire in 1822 and thatof M r . Read near Windsor (actually near Slough in Bucks in 1826, when a boy at Eton), as figured by Curtis : why M r .

Haworth should be ' in hopes of receiving specimens from Yorks ' (Samouelle 1819) is not appi:rent. Coleman in 1883 considered there to be no reasonable doubt that several were formerly taken in various parts of the country ; the Caterpillar was more than once found in the New Forest district. Whereas Meyrick in 1928 entertained practically no doubt it had been merely artificially introduced. In any case it has certainly becn extinct here for a fßll Century. T h e r e exist, however, quite enough data to firmly establish its erstwhile presence in our midst, the more especially when we find P. Machaon to have been generally distributed over England, as is best exhibited by Dale's personal records for midDorset before 1816, when he attributes its restriction to Fens to increase cultivation, drainage and cattle-trampling.—Our M e m b e r Mr. Frohawk possesses about the finest indigenous example of the above Papilio (Iphiclides) Podalirius, L., now extant, perfect excepting one antenna. It was recently given him by the late Revd.

D. Percy Harrison who labelled it as captured near Southampton about 1825 by M r . Witt, whence it passed to his two nephews then quite young, uncles of the donor. T h u s authenticated and beautiful, small wonder if forty sovereigns were eagerly though vainly proffered in exchange by Lord Rothschild, in whose collection is the latest British specimen, blown from France to Woolacombe in Devon during 1901. Oak in our primeval forests would seem, as far as the above four localities allow us to judge, the indigenous larva's food, though on the Continent stone-fruit trees are more usually atfected. Manwood's ' History of the Forest Laws' of England from the thirteenth Century opens a vast, if misty, vista m any Naturalist's mind. Note was taken by the crown Justices of the Forest of Hart, Hind, Kare, Boar and Wolf, as beasts of the forest ; Buck, Doe, Fox, Marten and Roe, as beasts of chase ; and Hare, Rabbit, Pheasant and Partridge, as beasts with fowls of warren. Such reserves covered no small proportion of England 111 Norman times : still there devolves to our day the New Forest which God preserve !

96

NEWS FOR

NATURALISTS.

" IT was a lovely day in October, and the trees were still in füll leaf although the beeches were turning yellow. T h e wood overhung a Valley of grass-land, running into down ; here sheep were grazing. Farther on lay the snug homestead : the round ricks, the thatched barns, the farmhouse glowing red out of the pretty garden which encompassed it. T h e whole represented pastoral England at its best : a landscape saturated with the unadulterated essence of Ärcadia—a scene deär to all Englishmen in remote parts of the earth, a mirage to be evoked and tenderly welcomed in desert places." H. A. Vachell's ' Her Son,' 1907, cap. 18. " FOR a while we slid past low-lying ground, verdant and fresh and blowing, but flat and sparsely timbered, with coppices here and there and, sometimes, Elms in the hedgerows and, now and again, a parcel of youngster Oaks about a green : fair country enough at any time, and at this summer sundown, homely and radiant. But there was better to come.—Soon the ground rose sharplv by leaps and bounds, the yellow road swerved to right and left, deep tilted meadows on one side with a screen of Birchcs beyond, and on the other a sloping rabble of timber, whose foliage made up a tattered motley, humble and odd and bastard, yet with it all, as rieh in tender tones and unexpected feats of drapery as fairyland. T h e road curled u p into the depths of a broad Pinewood, through which it cut, thin and dead straight, cool and strangely solemn. I n a flash it had become the nave of a cathedral, immense, solitary. Sombre and straight and tall, the walls rose u p to where the swaying roof sobered the mellow sunshine and only let it pass dim and, so, sacred. T h e wanton breeze, caught in the maze of tufted pinnacles, filtered its chastened way, a pensive O r g a n i s t , l e a r n e d to d r a w grave litanies from the boughs a n d reverently voice the air of sanetity. T h e fresh familiar scent hung for a smokeless incense, breathing high ritual and redolent of pious mystery. No circumstance of worship was unobserved.

With one consent Birds, Beasts and Insects made not a sound.

T h e precious pall of silence lay like a phantom cloud, unruffled.

Nature was upon her knees. Out of the priestless sanetuary, up over the crest of the rise, into the kiss of the sunlight we sailed, and so on to the blue-brown moor, all splashed and dappled with the brilliant yellow of the Gorse in bloom and rolling away into the hazy distance like an untroubled sea. So for a mile it flowed, a lazy p o m p of purple, gold-flecked and glowing. T h e n came soft cliifs of swelling woodland, rising to stay its course with gentle dignity : walls which uplifted eyes found but the dwindled edge of a far mightier flood that stretched and tossed, a leafy waste of billows, flaunting more living shades of green than painters dream of, laced here and there with gold and, once in a long while, shot with crimson, rising and falling with Atlantic grandeur, tili the eye faltered and the proud rieh waves seemed to be breaking on the rosy sky. And over all the Sun lay dying, his crimson ebb of

NEWS FOR NATURALISTS.

97

life staining the firmament with splendour, his mighty heart turning the dance of Death to a triumphant progress, where Blood and Flame rode by with clouds for chargers, and Earth and Sky themselves shouldered the litter oftheir passing K i n g " Dornford Yates' " Berry and Company." 1920, p. 222.

IT must be placed on record, for the information of future SuiTolk workers in this group, that our Member, Colonel C. G. Nurse's 2000 specimens of Aculeate Hymenoptera, the vast majority of which were collected between Bury St. E d m u n d s and Bamham, when he lived at Timworth Hall c.1910-32, were acquired after his death on 5 November 1933 (Trans, ii, p. cxxi) by the National Museum of Wales and are always available for study at Cardiff. One regrets their divorce from Suffolk no less than that of Mr. E. A. Elliott's collections in Hastings Museum.

DĂœRING my stay at Gambia throughout last J uly, I tsok several hundred specimens of which a small part were such familiar old friends as Gonepteryx rhamni and Argynnis La.th.onia ; Vanessa cardui was fairly common. T h e Diptera seem poor, the Hymenoptera not much better and the Beetles represented by Hylobius, several Cetonia the size of our New Forest aurata and little eise.

I found a very happy hunting ground, but to get there had to beg a lift from passing motorists, as it was many miles from Bathurst.

Having arrived, I ploughed my way through thick bush, naturally wearing long boots as Black Mambas and other dangerous Snakes lurk in these parts. T h e n I made for some open Clearings on the banks of the very swampy River Gambia. Here Crocodiles were too numerous for my liking and once, forgetting to ' let sleeping dogslie,' I h u r l e d a stick after one, thinking he would dive for the water. T o my surprise, he doubled back and came thundering at me. For a moment I held my breath as he went crashing past, only a couple of feet away, into the woods where pandemonium arose as he scattered Birds in all directions. Hence, I assure you, I shall disturb no more sleeping Crocodiles : this individual must must have measured six feet from snout to tail. T h e general Fauna that I noticed were Monkeys, very numerous Pelicans that do not breed here, White Egrets, Crested Cranes, Grey Hornbill and the brightly-coloured IHarmets Shrike.

You will see what a grand collecting place this was when I add the trees, Rhum Palm, Cocus nucifera, Mangoes and Adansojiia digitata.

In Gambia I was victimised by Anopheles, and went into hospital fifteen miles away. While there a fine Deilephila Nerii hawk-moth flew into the ward. Malaria or no, I was incapable of resisting such a Iure : other patients considered me stark mad as I dashed about in Pyjamas tili I got it nicely secured ! T h e fine Cockroach, Blabera gigantea is common in both Gambia and Senegal ; and I have a great Scorpion f r o m Bathurst, writes Member Stanley.

98

NEWS FOR

NATURALISTS.

THE Science of aviation is unlikely to have m u c h direct bearing upon Biology, beyond altitude and distance in the flight of Birds and Insecls. T h u s a Weevil, Sitona humeralis that was exhibited to the R. Entomological Society on 7 April last, entered the cabin of an aircraft, flying at 3400 feet above ground on 16 March, some ten miles south of Lincoln. Doubtless carried to that height by an air-current.—Many kinds of Spiders are well known to be parasitised by Hymenopterous flies ; but a quite novel sort of British host is represented by the common Tick, Ixodes ricinus ( T r a n s , iv, 168), from two out of 587 gorged nymphs of which a dozen of the Encyrtine Chalcid, Ixodiphagus Caucurtii, Buys.

(NEW to Britain), were shown at the same Meeting, f r o m C u m b e r land sheep late in the preceding September.

AN account of the erratics of the Cambridge Greensand, read before the Geological Society of London last 2 December, will interest our M e m b e r s of that bent and especially M r . William Fowler of Beccles, who has laboriously compiled ä long catalogue of Suffolk alien stones. In it Dr. Hawkes finds only two rocks that are unknown as British, the olivine-hyperite and a quartzsanidine-porphyry with coarse micropoikilitic texture. He rejects the hypothesis of ice transport and considers these erratics to have been probably carried in the roots of drift timber or by seaweed.

— O n 15 April Dr. Hocken and we visited the celebrated erratic Chedeston Stone, Ceddes-stan supposed to have been known to be in situ since at least A.D. 660 (Trans, ii, p. xxix), close to Cookley G r a n g e ; it is a splendid multistratified Sandstone, roughly circular, which has fallen down, apparently towards the north, its broadest end. Near that extremity only the strata contain pebbles of quartz, flint, &c. T h e whole of 9i feet N . & S. by 61 feet across at the broadest (N.) end ; around it are only two or three small fragments ; the whole is m u c h sunk by rabbit-holes, and quite unfenced in the corner of a f i e l d — Our M e m b e r Sir Shafto Adair loaned last April to the Ipswich M u s e u m his recent discovery at Homersfield of a Woolly Rhinoceros' skull, R. tichorhinus, well known f r o m the cave-graphs made by its Stone Age hunters and still excellently preserved.

B A T F L Y I N G AT N I G H T . — T h e r e seems to be a pretty general notion that Vespertilio pipistrellus flies at only dusk and dawn. In brilliant moonlight with no vestige of aftergl-ow in the west at just 10 p.m. on 18 of last May, at least one of these Bats was observed hawking up and down, six feet f r o m the ground, in M o n k s Soham

d r i v e . — M R S . R . A . MORLEY, d a t . c i t .