News for Naturalists 6 Part 2

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CAPTAIN CHAWNER AND PHOBERIA LUMARIS

Edward's 1832 capture at Lowestoft (Mein. SNS. 1937, 50, where insert befoie ' our sole specimen ' thus : " the record in Curtis' MS. Diary o f " , as given at E M M . 1904, 193).

As far as is traceable, the second was taken at sugar in West Wickham Wood near Woolwich in Kent, May 1860 (E. Wk. Int. viii, 91) ; two at Killarney in 1864 by Bouchard (Ent. Ann. 1865, 112) ; and the last came to light at Stratton Strawless in Norfolk during 1878 (Norf. Nat. Soc. iii, 686). Hence Meyrick in 1928 terms it "a scarce immigrant only; Hants [«'c, must be omitted] to Norfolk, and South I r J a n d . " Not tili quite recently did it occur to our mind to associate the very rare name of the above Captain* with that of Miss Chawner, whom we have had the always sincxre pleasure of knowing since we called (with the Revd. F. D. Moi lce) upon her in Lyndhurst on 28 August, 1901. At first blush the relationship looks improbable ; but it works out smoothly : allow Captain Edward to be 17 when at Lowestoft in 1832, he was thus born 1815. His parson brother was younger, say born 1825, and had a daughter when he was 41 in 1866, the year Miss Chawner has told us she was born.—Ed'.tor.l

NEWS FOR NATURALISTS. " W e grow grey, and know t h e worlc) for wt>3t it is."

Haggard's Brethren

TUE socialist government's heinous attempt to excludf '.he public from the Lanthorn Marshes and Stone Beach evokes a Member to regard it as " most difficult to explain or reason with unsympathetic powers why a certain area of Natural Beauty should be preserved. Every true Naturalist is sick and tired of the outrageous use and utter defilement of Lovely Areas : yet we know it is our duty to maintain by every means, and not destroy, so fastdwindling an heritage. In the majority of cases, the very spots that were lonely and wild, each with its specific charm, are just those. selected for terrible sophistication. Alternative sites do exist in this County and could have been preferred : Naturalists, who must know best, would be always willing to advise upon a selection where less damage might be wrought, but little or no weight is accorded them in these matters ; and protests become futile when once an area has been requisitioned. Those of us who —in times bygone (heu !)—were fortunate enough to visit the great Shingle Beach and Marshes of Orfordness in summer, perhaps tramping south from erosed Slaughden, were ever amazed at the vast beauty and varietv of their wild flowers. We were enamoured * C h a w n e r , one w h o has chawn, i.e. chewed : f r o m A S a x o n ceowan, pp. cowen, t o c h e w ; jaw was f o r m e r l y spelled chaw, akin to c h e w . — C . M .

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of the gargantuan stretches of shingle : their brilliancy on clear days, the appealing cries of sea-birds, the boisterous breeze, space and ferality. Indeed, it were joy to live, and the scene savoured of immortal Valkyries. Britain held no similar Situation : nowhere is such a shingle-beach with its precious Jasper, Agates and profusion of flowers. The Sea Pea (whose traditional seeds sustained life in Orford's famished folk during the sixteenth Century*) is so profuse that here is the plant's main British Station.

Associated flora are Yellow Horned-poppy, Sea-side Bladdercampion, rare Yellow Vetch Vicia lutea, large patches of the English and Biting Stone-crops, Sea Thrift, many kinds ol local Trefoils and an endless variety of other plants, lending vivid colour to the older grassy and lichen-spread stone-ridges. Salterns become attractive with Sea Lavenders, tufted grasses, rushes, sedges ; and the brackish dykes possess special forms of plant and lower-animal life that are all their own. This area is a very paradise for the botanist and zoologist, so certainly deserves priority as a Nature Reserve. Its very inaccessibility accords it special consideration _and claim to be given over to naturalists as a Sanctuary of Plants Âťnd Animals." * IIC vjcuiOgiotS Association (cp. Trans, iv, 47) accorded Ipswich and some of our own Members an excursion in july, when on 19th they went out to Bolton's brick-fields, and passed on to chalk-pits at Bramford and the Ammonites at Claydon ; Ipswich and its. museum were visited in the evening. On 20th coaches took them to Orford Castle, itself a unique geologic assemblage of strata ; then back to the white crag of Sudbourn Park, the Aldeby clay of Chillesford, red crag of Neutral-farm, "Virtues-farm near Hollesley, and finally to the two crags' juncture in Ramsholt Cliff (cf. Geol.

Mag. 1931, p. 419), which had been exposed by our Member Prof.

Kendali some years ago.

The Suffolk foxhounds met at Beyton-green, Mr. Wilfred Bevan, master. The first draw was a small wood by Beyton Crange, where a Fox was soon on foot and ere long went away to Tostock village. There he entered the rectory by its back door and sought refuge (one paper thought ' refuse ') in that holy of holies, the Rector's library. Having jumped on the tables and a desk, he lay down behind a large wicker chair ; and, at length, was induced to take his departure through a window opening to the ground.

It was fortunate that the two irrepressible house Terriers had accompanied the library's usual occupant, the Revd. Julian Tuck, * T h e Sea Pea Lathyrus maritimus, Big., " is interesting from che legend, still life in SufFolk, that it sprang u p spontaneouslv on the coast in 151.5, in a time of great scarcity. T h e miraculous arrival of these Peas is mentioned by Stow and Camden, and these historians supposed them to have sprung f r o m t h e cargo of some vessel wrecked on the coast and washed ashore ; but t h e Sea Pea is a distinct species, probably indigenous, and only first made use of in time of dearth. T h e seeds are bitter and. unpalatable."—Burnett's Outlines of Botany.

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to the church, or they would have tried to break up the Fox in the house, whose atmosphere was suggestive of a menagerie for the rest of that day.. His intrusion was too dearly compensated by his life, which he shortly afterwards lost at Thurston, having given us a ringing hunt of thirty minutes or so. His brush was presented to the Rector's daughter and, in days to come, will serve as a momento of this unusual incident (Bury Post & EAnglian Times, 1912).—Mr. Arthur Archibald Fräser of Rougham Place, sportsman and farmer, son of John Fräser of Batfunning in Stirlingshire, married Miss Winifred Mary, younger daughter of Julian Tuck, later the venerable President of Suffolk Naturalists' Society, at Tostock church, whereof he was rector for many years. The Bishop of Glasgow tied the knot and the whole village was beflagged in June 1912. Uncle Henry, Mr. W. H. Tuck, M.A., and Aunt Kate, Mrs. Emest Cocksedge, donated valuable presents.

The name of that wealthy solicitor and chairman of local J.P.'s, who lay embalmed in his coffin before a perpetual light for over four years in a bedroom of his Fox Den mansion at Burnham in Bucks, after decease in August 1943 aged 84 (Daily Paper, 5 Aug. 1947), because the govt. was too busy building workmen's dwellings to erect his willed vault, was Mr. Abel Ingpen. So arresting is it that one wonders if this Abel, born 1859, were related to t h a t ' Abel Ingpen, A.L.S. & M.E.S.', who published in London 1827 his 18mo. Instructions for Collecting, Rearing and Preserving British Insects. We possess only (bought July 1906 in Ipswich) the second edition, dated from Chelsea, May 20th, 1839 : it belonged to ' Elizabeth Massey, Ludlow, Salop. T h e gift of Emma Cofiner, my school fellow ; Ludlow, Dec. Ist, 1842'.

A third edition issued in 1843 : all are now forgot.

Member H. C. Grant teils us that there is an Earthworm Farm in Suffolk. At Haughley is the New Beils Farm, the research farm of the Soil Association ; and here Lady Eve Balfour is conducting experiments with a type of Earthworm developed in the United States. A large number of these Oligochaets (Trans, l, p. 118) has been always regarded by gardeners as a sign of soilfertility ; and it is, also, well known that many fertiiisers, particularly sulphate of ammonia, have a markedly dileterious effect on these Worms. Dr. G. S. Oliver of Fort Worth in Texas, after reading Darwin's ' The Earthworm and Vegetable Matter devoted himself to breeding and hybridizing Earthworms ; now he Claims to have produced a ' coolie ' Worm which, when distributed to farmers, is helping to restore many acres of land to fertility. Lady Eve has procured some of this Worm's eggs, and is breeding them at Haughley ; also she is carrying out several interesting experiments upon the type of soil, and type of soiltreatment, preferred by the Worms. Dr. Oliver claims to have crossed the Orchard Worm with the Brandling Worm ; but British and United States zoologists are sceptical as to the possibility of

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their hybridization. Both are structurally identical with the British Eisenia foetida, Sav. ; the sole difference being the physiological one that, whereas the latter is found in only manure or compost heaps, the American imported one will live also in ordinary earth.

Our Scots news this year comes from Dr. Blair, who was up there in August. " We had a very good time, though my own activities were limited. Erebia aethiops, never seen by me before, was plentiful and other novelties were Carsia paludata and Hydriomena minorata, with larvae of Endromis versicolora. Beetles were not very choice, Leptura sanguinolenta being the best; and I had not before taken Acanthocinus aedilis or Zilora ferruginea, as well as a few others met with. I did not see Trechus montanus,.

Pytho depressus or Rhagium inquisitor, which I had hoped to find" and used to be taken by our late Member, Sir Hudson Beare in some numbers.

Consequent upon his brother's death (Trans, v, page c), Colonel Nurse of Timworth Hall's collection of Lepidoptera came to the hammer in London on 12 Dec. 1946, when the long series of Windermere Eustroma reticulata fetched sums varying from 18 to 55 shillings per lot. The three twenty-odd drawer mahogany cabinets were very cheap nowadays at thirteen to a score of sovs. apiece ; of another property, 42/. was paid for one of the same size.

A capital explanation to that very general question, asked by us of our governess Miss Lucy Lavender at Orchard Hall in Newark during 1879, ' Do Stones Grow ? ' is accorded by the socialist Daily Mirror of 21 July 1947, which confides that ever " since we were small we have been told by country people that stones grow, those in their gardens are bigger than they were. Now, stones are inanimate, therefore they cannot grow. But if you ask whether stones get bigger, the answer is that many do, in several ways :— Stones may get larger by absorbing water ; may get larger by accretion, i.e. the addition of material from without; or may expand with heat and, if they do, they do not contract to their former size. Thus they have grown in size, but not biologically.

The other argument country people put forth is, pointing to a field, to say it had not its present number of surface stones twenty years ago and, if they do not grow, whence have come the additional ones ? The answer here is equally simple :—Constant freezing and thawing of the ground, which push stones to the surface. Water expands when it freezes so, when the ground is frozen, stones are slightly lifted by the ice that forms below them.

When the ice melts they do not settle back into their former positions, because earth has worked in underneath them. Hence, after many frosts and thaws, new stones appear upon the surface of the ground. But they have not grown there from pebbles ; they have merely thus come up from " subterranean positions, as every searcher for Crag Fossils has long experienced.

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One cannot doubt that the time is now come to abandon the vaunted Law of Priority in Zoological Nomen clature ; it has run its Century, at the omega of which we are no nearer stability than at its alpha. It has ever been binding only upon those willing to be bound by it, whence indeed has woe been to that man by whom change cometh. It is surely fair to assume nowadays that every musty tome published between 1758 and, say, 1850 has been adequately jackalled, establishing the improbability of more " earlier names ' arising. And just so far as the British Insects are concerned the issue, by our Members M M . W . D . Hincks (now of

the Manchester Museum, Manchester 13) and G. S. Kloet of Wilmslow, of their List of the indigenous kinds erects a Atting period-stone to mark the termination of a custom already ensued to its reasonable limits. Its original object was the attainment of stability, which can be had by nothing but arbitrarv cessation. " Hold ; enough ! " The name Pickerei as an inn-sign (in effect writes MemD;r Lingwood in a local paper of 20 Feb. 1946), omitted by Larwood & Hotten, is used as a diminutive of the adult fish, in our county at Stowmarket, Pudding Moor in Beccles, Ixworth and no doubt elsewhere. In no sense could it be applied to the Pike, forty-four inches in length and thirty pounds in weight that had been landed at Oulton Broad a week before by Bob Richardson. [This se'ems on all fours, so to put it, with that Perch (Perca fluviatilis, L.) \ 1 \ inches in length and IIb. 3%oz. in weight that was caught on a home-made rod and line with no landing-net in the Waveney at Beccles in August 1947 by Mervyn Easey, aged six !—Ed.] But fifty-pounds Esox lucius, L. (pike is called lucie in hsraldry), are upon record ; and one, caught by Lord Kenmure's gamekeeper on a peacock-feather fly in Loch Nees about 1774, is said to have turned the scale at sixty-one pounds. Sir Francis Bacon believed forty years the limit of this species' life, so tales of older patriarchs may be disregarded. But some of the extensive Pike, creating local records, are at least as many years old as their weight in pounds. This cannot, however, apply to the specimen quoted by Yarrell as ringed definitely on 5 October 1230 and as certainly landed in Swabia during 1497 : a tall story.

Doubtless a very rare victim of tetanus was the Sydney boy of thirteen, who died of injuries he received from a Magpie of unstated species, reported by London paper of 25 October 1946.

Charles G. Barrett states that he identified " several specimens of the Skipper Butterfly Hesperia alveus [Passociated with beehives], HĂźb., well known on the Continent, that had been captured in a damp Valley bordered by a wood near Cawston [four miles from Aylesham and fourteen from the coast of Norfolk] by the Rev. Theodore H. Marsh about 1874. Then they were mistaken for the common H. malv<e, L., and placed under that name in the collection of Mr. Marsh, who did not know the latter species.

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S. alveus has never since been seen in that locality, though fiequently looked for. The conclusion seems to be that a small and very partial migration of S. alveus from the Continent may have taken place, but that it was unable to maintain itself here " (Trans.

Norf. Nat. Soc. 1899, p. 533). He later retains it as British on the strength of the same " several specimens captured in a narrow valley in Norfolk at the end of May or beginning of June in only one season, in or about 1860. A strenuous effort to rediscover it at Cawston in 1892 met with no success. One other specimen, said to have been captured in Yorkshire, was exhiDited by Mr. J. T. Carrington at S. Lond. Ent. Soc. in January 1890, under the naroe Syrichthus Carthami " (Brit. Lepid. i, 272-4). Dr. Ford in 194-5 perverts the above record : " It is possible specimens have been purposely released. Thus several of the European Pyrgus alveus [misprinted in index] were caught on the Norfolk coast in 1860 " (Butterflies, 160). Meyrick scouts Barrett's name: " Several H. Armoricana, Oberth. (at first identified as alveus), a species from NW. France resembling malvse but larger and having hindwings without white spots above but with two series of obscure pale marks, are said to have been taken in Norfolk about 1860 ; as it does not appear that they were labelled, there may have been an error of memory or chance introduction " (Rev's. HB. 1928, 370). Edwards had dissected the genitalia and considered them absolutely diagnostic of H. alveus, whether in its more prevalent State or in the sparsely. spotted form H. Speyeri, Stgr.

(EMM. 1903, 90).—Now our Member EDis of Norwich Museum writes that therein are " this dissected specimen and two others in Mr. Marsh's collection ; but none of these really look like quite any Continental alveus, of which we have a good series. In size and wing-pattern they approach H. onopordi and H. serratulae, Rbr.; but I cannot match them exactly with anything Continental, and they are well below the average size of H. alveus. None bear data ; and (hitherto not mentioned) in the same series as Mr. Marsh's malvae [cf. supra] and alveus, is an undoubted specimen of Hesperia (Battus) sao, Bgstr., the presence of which must cast considerable doubt on the whole m a t t e r " (in lit. 5 Feb. 1946).

What a coil is caused by inserting Foreign specimens, unlabelled, into British cabinets ! Expunge H. alveus, Hüb.

Good it is to find that, though vainly sought in Suffolk (Trans, v, 207), Gold has been quarried in Britain since Saxon times, when our kings Struck a few pieces that never came into regulär currency. The earliest English gold coin and only gold penny, worth a score of the ordinary silver pennies of the period, was minted in London during 1257 by a moneyer giving the legend ' Willem on Lvnde ' and depicted King Henry iii enthroned. Its material was probably mined in Cornwall, for Britain'b own gold is crushed from the Quartz of Sutherland in Scotland, the Wicklow hills of Ireland, and formerly many places in Wales. Their

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production in 1864 was worth rather less than ten thousand pounds.

Now Wales (Trans, iv, p. lxxxi) works no more than a single goldmine, which is near Barmouth whose hills in 1939 we traversed.

It still behoves us to keep a wide and wary eye for the Colorado Beetle, over a dozen colonies of which have ' materialised ' this year. In June a man was smartly fined for possessing live specimens ; the Telegraph of 4 July reported two infestations of them at Godbtone in Surrey, and later a Beetle near Luton. It was left to casual campers to find larvtc at Cotton End near Bedford on the 7th, as well as a female with progeny of 250 larvae at Beddington near Croydon, says the Times of 8th.

On that day the Miribter of Agriculture is reported to be aware, up to 3rd, of eleven ' small' colonies this year in addition to 142 isolated Beetles, among which only two inrtances of possibly indigenous reproduction are allowed : of course, ' it is believed the sitnation is under control'.

Both the Times' distinctly perturbed leader of 9 July and Mr. Buckhurst in the Countyman of June believe the pest capable of Aying the English Channel : we, judging solely by the alate power of its British allied species, have not the least faith in such a supposition. Their flight is invariably feeole ; and our Member Ellis of Norfolk has kindly given us many drowned specimens found by him last 18 June floating upon incoming tide at Petit Port, Guernsey, obviouslv blown into the sea. Whatever eise Tom Williams Statement did, it seems to have suppressed further reports in the press and caused Continental air-ports round Croydon, Northolt, Bassingbourn, Arrington, Hurn and in Cambs to be sprayed with a mixture of lead arsenate. Natheless, the Telegraph reported six Beetles at Radlett in Herts on 15 July, as well as thirty larvae at Kempston near Bedford on 16th ; and EADTimes ' several hundred ' at Tonbridge in Kent with a family of larvae at Foxcote in Somerset on 2 August. Thus it has recurred in Cambs and Herts, though Essex and Norfolk appear to have been immune this year, as is still our own County: for, though a man found what he believed a Colorado Beetle in a sack of Potatoes at Carlton-road in Lowestoft on 20 October last year, it was not!