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NATURALISTS. in immortal youth, u n h u r t of elements, the wrecks the crush of worlds." Joseph Addison. 1672-1719.
Historical Natural History always arrests attention.^ Though neither scientific nor strictly local, the Latin " Treatise " of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217), abbot of Cirencester in Glos., is distinctly interesting on account of its early date. Its translation was published some years ago in the Rolls series by Thomas Wright, upon whom we have to rely for the specific identity. T h e whole is a manual of Natural Science as then understood, showing an innate bent for experiment and well illustrating how prevalent was the late Norman love of Animals : folk, apparently of all classes, were then very ready to observe natural phenomena and delighted in keeping specimens. Many medieval Castles and manor-houses maintained veritable menageries of rare Beasts, such as the Lions of London Tower ; and numerous anecdotes are recounted about the populär chase and its victims. One cannot expect such a monk to avoid the superstitions of his period and the easily domesticated Raven was emblematic, in both colour and habits, of the secular clergy ; clamour among Carrion Crows foretold rain, and the Magpie is referred to. House Sparrows are termed libidinous birds, light, restless, injurious to the fruits of man's labour and, though prone to epilepsy, too astute for the fowler's wiles. He talks of Sky Lark and Nuthatch, regarding the Nightingale so local that its song was unknown upon one side of a Welsh river though frequent upon the other. Swallows were remarkable for the peculiar form and Situation of their nests ; but he says of the Cuckoo that it does nothing but repeat ' affer, affer ' (i.e. give, give), typifying avarice, and 'sang the ancient song of those who have not yet divested themselves of the old Adam ' : just what he means is obscure. Wrens are unusually fertile and, when placed before a fire to roast, turned themselves upon the spit with the utmost regularity ; doubtless Goldcrest is intended and such defunct rotation originated Neckam's name Regulus, which he derives from this ' smallest of Birds ' having adhered to and so surmounted that Eagle who claimed avian sovereignty by soaring highest in the sky. Such pride of place affords much monkish moralising. Sparrow Hawks were said to clasp some ' wild Chick ' to their breast to keep it warm o' nights and to be, in thankful recompense, safely liberated o' mornings. T h e hawker's Peregrine Falcon is naturally eulogised at great length ; he dulv acknowledges that Barnacle Geese are ' generated from the gluey
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substances produced on Fir-timber when immersed in the waves of the sea ' ; and that Swans celebrate their own death by sweet song. T o Doves, and especially both Pheasant and Partridge as fowls of warren, attention had been given ; but the sole Mammal, about which an Observation is vouchsafed, is a Weasel that caught a Sparrow Hawk and drowned it by dragging it under water. Domestic fowls are illustrated by curious physical explanations of the Cock's comb and why he crows at dawn. The old legends of the Phoenix and Pelican ' in piety ' are joined to tamed Vultures, Peafowl, Ostrich said to bear its young no affection, Ibis of Egypt and the ever favourite Parrot tribe that already is famous for its mischievous wiles and so amusing in producing subhuman speech that it was preferred to even the fashionable jongleurs of the twelfth Century. That Veteran Naturalist, our Member Mr. Frohawk, enumerates a plethora of facts, all too curtly, in his Centenary of the Great Auk's Extinction (Field of 13 May 1944). This great flightless Bird, nearly three feet long (Alca impennis, L.), has left its bones in the old kitchen-middens of Durham, Caithness and the Hebrides. It abounded during the 16th & 17th centuries on Funk Island off Newfoundland ; but English and French marines salted them for food tili none remained there early in 1800. It never occurred as far north as the Arctic Circle ; nor was it ever abundant on the British coast or bred nearer than Iceland. It was essentially pelagic and land was sought solelv in the breeding season, when isolated islands were selected, so its habits never became intimately ascertained though they appear similar to those of the Razorbill. Eight months were spent in roving over the ocean and southern hiemal migration. It was a great submarine flyer, using the short and fin-like wings with considerable rapidity, guided by the large webbed feet, to cover vast distances. Its extinction was of gradual execution :—about 1800 a few occurred on the Faroes ; in 1812 a female was vainly chased in the Orkneys ; in 1813 another was killed and is in the British Museum ; during 1821 one was captured off St. Kilda ; 1829 another found dead on Lundy. Its main breeding-ground in SW. Iceland became submerged in 1830, when it moved to Wire Island where the species lingered tili the final pair were destroyed in 1844. Waterford harbour afforded one, that lived four months, in 1834 ; and in February 1844 a specimen was picked up in Co. Cork. Durham Museum has one that was bought for seven or eight pounds years ago ; in the Edinburgh Museum is a skin that sold for ^ 3 6 7 J in 1895 ; an egg was auctioned in 1926 for 305 guineas. More than 200 million tons of coal have been found under Solway Firth. T h e main seam, varying in thickness from 101 ft. to 12 ft., lies under the sea, was located in November 1943, and expert opinion is that it will yield from 2,500 to 3,500 tons of coal a day for centuries. The seam has been Struck 1,300 yards from
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the pit shaft at high water mark. T w o shafts have been sunk, and the colliery is to be equipped in such a way that the winning of the coal will present fewer of the difficulties in the way of manual labour than are commonly associated with many colliery undertakings. It is practicable to go six miles seaward in winning the coal.—Daily Paper. The New Forest rural-district Council, says the local Lymington paper last November, reports damage wrought by German aeroplanes since August 1939. It treats the matter solely from the species Homo sapiens, Linn., point of view ; but this enables one to judge the extent of havoc in a broader sphere of general Fauna and Flora. T h e 150 square miles concerned lost no more than 25 humans killed and fifty damaged, of which most were outside the actual Forest. N o more than half the total fourteen villages of the ßistrict suffered at all from the estimated 2,700 b o m b s dropped. Of these Sway and the main street in Brockenhurst were partly conflagrated late in August 1940 ; Boldre was b o m b e d in July 1941, and a machine winged near the church ; but as a whole building-devastation was peculiarly small. Undoubtedly the glorious New Forest has been lain waste in that period far more by the erection of hangars and ramifications of tank-practice than from any enemy incursions though, of course, the former must also be laid to his charge. . . . Our Member, Dr. Haselfoot Haines found the past season there one of the worst in his extensive experience : " it was simply demoralising, and made one feel either net or boxes useless. We had a sheet of splendid Angelica flowers in the marsh during the autumn, but on it were hardly any Diptera, Hymenoptera or other Insects at a l l " about Linwood. Very different were the conditions during 1943, of which excellent year Dr. Haines gives localised accounts in his three valuable papers, received by us on Nov. 6 1944, on (1) Notes on General Zoology, (2) Ornithological Report for Hampshire and (3) Insects in H a m p shire, in Proc. Hants. Field Club, xvi, Part 1. Our Member, M r . Richardson, writes to the Local Daily Paper on 20 April last on the ' Diet of the Rook ' : I can confidently say that the rook does not feed on c o m , but entirely on wireworm, Centipedes and other destructive pests. I have recently drilled a field of barley near a small rookery. T h e field was inspected by an official as it was Coming through, and his opinion was that it was ruined. Now, a week later, the field has a marvellous plant of barley, owing to the rooks Clearing out the wireworm, which last year badly damaged a crop of sugar beet. T h i s is concrete proof that the rooks do not eat com, as they worked every row from top to bottom of the field. T h e birds, recently opened and found to contain 80 per cent. of c o m in the crops, must have been pigeons. Rooks are destructive to maize, and sometimes beans, by pulling them up. T h i s can be prevented by killing one and tearing it into three pieces and laying it on the ground.
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It is generally forgotten nowadays that " no present which Insects have made to the arts is equal in Utility and universal interest, comes so directly home to our affections, or is the instrument of producing more valuable fruits of human wisdom and genius, than the product of the Dye Insect: I mean the Fly that gives birth to the gall-nut, whence INK is made How infinitely are we indebted to this creature, which at once enables us to converse with absent friends be their distance from us ever so great, and supplies the means to ' give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name enabling the poet, philosopher and divine to embody their thoughts for the amusement and instruction of mankind. The Insect which produces the gall-nut is of the genus Cynips, Linn. Olivier first described it as gallae tinctoriae; it had better perhaps, as Compound trivial names are bad, be called Cynips scriptorum. The galls originate on the leaves of an Oak, Quercus infectoria Oliv., very common throughout Asia Minor, in many parts of which they are collected by the inhabitants and exported from Aleppo and other ports in the Levant. The galls most esteemed are those known as Blue Galls, being the produce of the first gathering before the Fly has issued from them ; from these, when bruised, may be occasionally obtained perfect Insects, one of which I lately procured in this way. Galls that escaped the first searches and from most of which the Fly has emerged are called White Galls and of very inferior quality, containing less of the astringent principle than the Blue Galls in proportion of two to three. Both sorts are usually imported mixed in about equal proportions, and are then called Galls in Sorts. If no Substitute equal to Galls as a constituent part of Ink has been discovered, the same may be said of these productions as one of the most important of our Dyeing materials, constantly employed in dyeing black " (William Kirby of Barham, Introd. Entom. i, 1815, p. 319).—The Galls are of the size of a boy's marble, very hard and round, with various tubercles on the surface ; they contain but a single inhabitant, which may often be found in the interior on breaking the gall. This species resembles our English Cynips Kollari, Htg., which resides in a globular Oak-gall, in its habit of undergoing its transformations within the gall, leaving a great portion of the gall unconsumed (adds Westwood 1840, p. 129).—This was the sole kind of Ink used in Europe up to so late as 1840, excepting only the ultra-black Chinese ink which was then, and is now usually, employed exclusively by draughtsmen. This common writing ink was composed of Cynips-galls and copperas, and possessed none of the blue colouring of modern inks containing no iron. Such iron-gall ink varied slightly in colour, the sulphate of iron causing it to take on a russet hue after any lengthy exposure to air in an open ink-pot; in time its blackest Script would equally fade, i.e., the tannate or gallate gradually showed persistently more rufescent oxide of iron. Just when the merits of Cynips scriptorum, Kirby, in this direction first came to be appreciated does not emerge.
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Mr. Engleheart writes to the Local Daily Paper on 20 April last on the ' Level of the North Sea ' : What is the evidence for a change of mean tide level in the historical period ? I know of none. Moreover, there appears to have been no notable subsidence of land in Suffolk since that which followed the last Ice Age, turning the seaward Valley into estuaries, causing the submerged forests which are found here and there, starting the formation of the Broads, and opening the Straits of Dover. This movement came to an end perhaps 3,000 years ago. Subsidence up to a few feet will have occurred since then in places by settlement of deposits through the decay of stranded or growing vegetable matter which has been buried under them, but I know no evidence for any other noticeable changes in the level of the land. T h e enormous erosion of soft cliffs which has probably gone on now for many centuries has produced masses of sand and shingle, part of which, swept to the South by the main tide run, has tended to silt up the estuary mouths and to turn them Southward (though also, as " Suffolk Coast " observes, protecting the low-lying land), but part has formed a number of sandbanks further out. T h e resulting perturbation of the tidal streams must cause complicated eddies, with a local piling up at high tide, now here, now there, as the sandbanks form and shift. Thus, in any given Century, high tide level may rise at one place, while only a few miles awav it may be falling. In this sense the sea'level changes. Not among the more serious regrettable incidents of war was our strafing of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. More deadly might have been the two self-impelled bombs that very nearly Struck the Natural History Museum in eaTly July last; their concussion shattered every window in the Building but, most fortunately, the irreplaceable collections were utterly undamaged, and the sole casualties minor ones, caused by glass-splinters. Their particular launching-sites in France were very soon afterwards demolished, so nothing as nasty later ensued. For several years now precautions against such incidents have been taken ; British collections were stored in a place of safety, the Foreign ones transported with much of the valuable Library to central and northvvest England along with their respective Assistants from the Museum. Some Insects, " in an ordinary small wooden box on a table, were buried in a shower of glass, but remained undamaged. The Museum is a sad sight, with all the front windows and most on one side gone and doors broken : all the cases in the exhibition galleries smashed, though some of the specimens have been salvaged. It will be years before these exhibits can be reassembled. Fortunately the first bomb feil during the Museum's closure, and the second on the roadway outside at midday when it was not open to the public : otherwise there might have been a long casualtylist. As it happened, many of the staff received minor injuries
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but those of only one were at all serious, and he is novv back at work. T h e damage too, although deplorable, is more or less superficial, i.e. exhibitions have suffered, not the study-collections of which most had been removed." No written word appears to have survived anent the draining of the Wash by Romans. So quite probably our earliest picture of Fenland, bordering commonly upon SufFolk, Norfolk, Cambs and Lines, is that bok, written and dedieated to King /Elfweald of East Anglia, A.D. 713-749, by Monk Felix of Crowland Abbey. It is couched in early churchmen's superstitious terms (so well expressed by Kingsley) and presents as vividly as one can expect at that period, a picture of this watery waste twelve hundred years ago. A rough translation of his ASaxon Latin would ran thus :— In the parts of Britain belonging to the Midland English there is a very bitter marsh of immense size which, beginning from the banks of the River Gronta not far from the Castle (castello : cestre) that is called Gronte, extends drawn out a very long way [sixty miles], now with pools, now and then with dark sluggish vapours and waters poured forth, occasionally with thick woods upon intersecting islands, from south to north as far as the sea When therefore the man of blessed memory, Guthlac [saint, died 11 April 714], discovered uncultivated places of that very vast desert, having invoked heavenly helpers, he proeeeded by the very straight way of a footpath It happened therefore that he elicited from the neighbouring inhabitants a knowledge of that wilderness ; and, while they were telling of the very many uncultivated places of that spacious desert, behold, a certain man among those who were standing by, Tatwine [the incident is dated circa 710 by Searle] by name, asserted that he knew a certain island in the hidden remoter parts of the desert, which many of those trying to inhabit it had left, on account of the unknown (incognita : menig-fealdon) monsters of the wilderness and terrors of diverse forms When he had heard this, Guthlac the man of blessed memory, demanded of him who told him that he should show him that place. Complying with these commands Tatwine, having taken a little fishing-boat through pathless swamps into the borders of a noisome marsh, Christ being their fellow-traveller, arrived at the aforesaid island, which in the tongue of the Angles is called Craland, which had remained hitherto uncultivated and unknown on account of the solitude of the remoter desert. N o colonist at all before Guthlac the servant of Christ had been able to inhabit this island, manifestly because of the appearances of demons lurking there. . . . In which island Guthlac, the man of God, despising the enemy, having invoked the aid of heaven, began to dwell alone amidst the shady groves of the wilderness.—Monk Felix's dedication to the King of Suffolk & Norfolk runs thus : " Domino meo mihi pre ceteris regalium primatuum gradibus dilectissimo /Eluualdo rego orientalium Anglorum vite rigimina regenti '