Observations 6 Part 1

Page 1

46

OBSERVATIONS

OBSERVATIONS. " T h e true scientific mind builds itself an observatory upon the border line of present, which separates the infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its sallies even to the beginning and to the end of all things. As to death, the scientific mind dies at its post working in normal and methodic fashion to the end ; it disregards so petty a thing as its own physical dissolution as completely as it does all other limitations upon the plane ofmatter."—Doyle, Poison Belt, cap. 3. A RARE FOSSIL SHELL.—A year or t w o ago I picked u p a r o u n d

Flint, of the circular ' Westleton gun-shot gravel' at north Holton, containing both a perfect and imperfect specimen of the pre-crag Pecten despecta. T h e y are elongate Scallop-shells, multiradiate and, of crag-species, most resembling Pecten pusio, P e n n . (Trans. Ii', 2 3 7 ) . — M . HOCKEN, D e c . 1945.

YARN HILL.—Ever since I found that Searles Wood had taken the rare fossil shell Pecten princeps, Sow., var. pseudoprinceps, W d . , there (Trans, ii, 238), I have wanted to search Yarn Hill in South Cove for it. O f t e n I have passed along the road over Potter's Bridge whence the Hill lies inland a few h u n d r e d yards on the south side of Easton estuary, b u t alwayo in too great haste to dally. Early in October, 1946, however, I found it to be a subcircular eminence, some four h u n d r e d paces in circumferencc, rising about forty feet above the marshland ; of gravel under red sand which may well be Crag though not a uhc'l of any sort was apparent in the scarty mole-runs and rabbit-scratchings. It is clothed with Gorse, Broom, Bracken and some fine, then seedirg, heath grass. Adjacent westward has been a second smaller hill, mainly dug away for it;gravel. A DANGEROUS ALGA.—I happened to be Walking slowly along a path, f o r m e d some five years ago and ever since then persistently close machine-mown, on chalky boulder clay in M o n k s Soham garden : when I slipped and nearly feil, just as t h o u g h I had stepped u p o n ice. I looked down to discover the cause and f o u n d the ground, among the grass and weed roots, blackened for about an irregulär foot in diameter by a dense low oleaginous growth of some Alga. Superficially one would a : c o u n t for its presence this year for the first time by the season's exceptional humidity ; b u t , even so, one would expect there to be some f a l c r u m below the ground-surface whence the plant could sprout. None is apparent, i.e. nothing b u t the close-cropped herbage on bare clay : no such suitable f u l c r u m as rotten sticks has been allowed to work into the clay. As I could recall no similar slippery mass elsewhere, I sent a sample, in simple rain-water to avoid shrivelling, to M r . Mayfield for identification. H e teils m e (in lit. 18 Sept.) that it is Nostoc commune, Vauch., and anything less like the dry and papyraceous sac of T r a n s , v, 141, it were hard to imagine, adding that at M e n d l e s h a m " my own garden paths have been ornamented this s u m m e r by two other terrestrial Algae : Ulothrix radicans, auct., forming a thin green feit and Porphyridium cruentum auct., looking like coagulated blood " : both N E w t o Suffolk.—CLAUDE MORLEY.


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