News for Naturalists 7 Part 1

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NEWS FOR

NATURALISTS.

O u r fathers find their graves in o u r s h o r t m e m o r i e s , A n d sadly teil us h o w we m a y be buried in o u r survivors. —Sir T h o m a s Brown.

I WAS in Holly Wood, Bentley, last Thursday : the way a large area has been cut down is terrible, every tree and bush and all other Vegetation b u r n t ; they have been hard at it for months.

On the edge of the wood and marsh on the Capel side an appalling gyrotyller has torn up trees, etc., in leaf, just to get another strip to add to a great expanse where hedges and trees have been grubbed out. It makes one sick to see it. The whole area from the wood to the main Colchester Road is now bare, excepting for electric pylons and farm buildings. Have you seen the pylons at Wherstead and Belstead and on to Sproughton ? That lovely valley from the Ostrich Inn to the Belstead Road is completely ruined. Thus our countryside vanishes and nothing can halt the destruction, but that Common Sense which is lacking, Writes Francis Simpson ; 7 May. Among " T H E IMMORTALS " I see that plumber Hunt of Framlingham, who collected Moths about 1850, is not in the Naturalists' List (Trans, vi, 175). But I am glad to find there that Edmund Cavell was a lawyer of Saxmundham. His collection of Pliocene Vertebrata and Mollusca, or part of it, is deposited in Framlingham College museum, along with his publications on the latter subject.

In it is the supposedly unique type-specimen of Scallaria Cavelli, auct., a small and sandy-coloured Shell, resembling the wentletrap or staircase one ; it has lost the apical two whorls. Many of the Fossils in that collection are still unnamed, writes Mr. A. E. Aston on 21 Feb. Can any Member specify these " publications," quite unknown to us.

We are delighted to hear from our Member, Mr. Ellis of Norwich Museum, that a nice colony of the Large Copper Butterfly, Lycaena dispar of the form Batavus, was laid down in one of the Norfolk Broads during the summer of 1949, with the help of Captain J. B. Purefoy of Cobham and the Entomological Society's protection committee. It has, he adds, unfortunately died out from Wicken Fen in Cambs. and its food-plant is in danger of becoming drained to extinction at Wood Walton, so we are trying to give the Insect a chance of perpetuating in Norfolk, where we seem to possess the correct conditions for its survival; and at present promising goodly numbers of young larvae are feeding on the Water Docks. It is very nearly, if not quite, extinct now in its native Holland localities.

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Worthy of perpetuation is the Statement, of a " FarmworkerNaturalist " in a Suffolk newspaper on 29 November last, that in the north-west of the County " Bird-life is very plentiful.

One morning between five and seven a.m. last summer I noted over sixty species within two miles of our house. Yet cover for nesting sites Was scarce, apart from Pine wind-breaks and an occasional Hawthorn-hedge," pretty obviously indicating the Breck District. We should much like to see these sixty-odd kinds specified : cp. the Revd. R. B. Caton's very fully detailed list in Vol. i of our Transactions. " T h e Stowmarket and District Naturalists' Society" was inaugurated on 5 February 1949, when the otticers elected Were : Patron, Mr. Arthur Mayfield of Mendlesham, F.L.S. ; President, Mr. Charles Partridge ; Chairman, Mr. W. H. Naylor, head of the local Grammar School ; and Hon. See., M r . W. G. Thurlow.

T h e annual subscription was fixed at a half-crown ; a dozen of our own Members at once joined, and by the end of the month the total had risen to over fifty Members (Platten, llth).—A joint Meeting was held on 8 March last in the Wesley Hall in Lowestoft of the R. Soc. for Protection of Birds, British T r u s t for Ornithology, and the Lowestoft Field Club. Our Member, Mr. F. C. Cook presided and stated the last to now possess a membership of fifty-seven. Later the last association elaborated its title into " T h e Lowestoft and North Suffolk Field Naturalists C l u b " and, as such, in mid-May issued the Lowestoft Field Club's third annual Report, mainly concerned with the Birds of northeast Suffolk, though other subjects are lightly referred to. T h e Hon. Secretary is E. W. C. Jenner of 119 Worthing Road there.— Of the Mildenhall Society no tidings have reached us this year.

We hasten to congratulate our Lowestoft Secretary, Jim Burton esquire, upon his generosity in bringing back to Suffolk the type speeimen of Pieris napi, Linn., var. fumosa, Thomp., acquired by him this spring at auetion in London (he adds that " the less Said of its price the better ! "), which was captured by the sister of our late Member, Mr. B. S. Harwood, on 5 August, 1925, while Aying in their small back garden of Fern Villa in Sudbury (cf.

Proc. iii, p. exlii), as Mr. Harwood told us that year.

A NOVEL subject of research is that of the animals, mainly Shrimps and their allies, that live in Caves. Mr. E. A. Steward of Berkhamstead wrote to us last March that " It has become evident here, just as it has on the Continent, that the Cavernicolous aquatic Fauna is by no means restricted to roomy Caves ; but there is probably a larger ränge, and a more varied one, in the joints and small underground watercourses of the softer Limestones, such as Chalk. And, as we have in preparation a Distribution List of Cave Fauna, it would be incomplete and misleading if

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the area, was limited to finds in Caves only. Therefore we have sent out a wide enquiry, but as was expected very little collecting has hitherto been done in any area of Britain [on account of the paucity of Crustaceanists], T h e confirmation from every source that Asellus aquaticus, L., is common practically throughout Britain is interesting because it thence appears thatAsellus cavaticus, Schdt., has a very limited ränge ; but the latter may be from lack of adequate collecting. (There follows a half-dozen species pretty well confined to such peculiar situations.) If any of these genera of Niphargus, Crangoniger and Bathynella turn up in a well, or water in mine, the other Crustaceans there become interesting even if surface-living species as they may at times be troglophiles." T h e whole subject is fascinating and almost untouched in England, especially in such districts [like Suffolk] as have no or but few Caves.

A fossil, measuring about eight inches in length by five inches in breadth and picked up at Rishangles, has been pronounced

by Ipswich M u s e u m to be part of an extinct Marine Reptile that lived in the Jurassic age. T h e fossil is estimated at twenty-five million years old, and was reported in a local neWspaper on 30 November.—Whence one imagines it most probably part of an Ichthyosaurus or Plesiosaurus skeleton, such as are detailed at our Trans, ii, 215, obviously carried to High Suffolk in chalky boulder-clay.

In connection with the reference to Cock Fighting in the Proceedings of 1 March, 1949, it should be recorded that a valuable case is preserved in the entrance to the historic " Bull I n n " at Barton Mills. This contains the M S . " Rules and Order of Cocking, As Sanctioned by John Ardesoif at the Pit, St. James Park in the Citie of Westminster this ffourthe day of June 1755," bearing a seal and John's signature ; along with seven spurs, one hood, a leather tie and eight feathers.

W h e n he had dug out the ruins of Eridu in Mesopotamia a dozen miles from U r of the Chaldees about 1920, Campbell T h o m s o n found it to have been a sea-port: now ninety miles from the sea ! H a d the intervening geological strata risen or (as at Frostenden—Trans, vi, p. xcvii) the water-level sunk ?

Exact investigation allowed of neither explanation, though all was drowned in loose sandy desert and ever had been so since the city's foundation five thousand years ago by the Sumerians, who antedated the Babylonians there. T h e n he unearthed some of those surpassingly indestractible Mollusc-shells ; and applied science—a very pretty thing when not itself destructive—stepped in. T h o s e waste Shells, mere debris f r o m the kitchen midden, like the ones so frequent in Denmark and the Oysters (our present Colchester natives, Ostrea edulis) equally abundant on the

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Roman site in Bredfield, towards Dallinghoo Weald, were found by expert Conchologists to be a Fresh-water Mussei, allied to the Suffolk Anodonta cyanea (Transact. iv, 6). " Instantly all theories that Eridu stood on a seashore were refuted. Fresh-water Shells revealed that it stood on a lake, connected by a Sumerian canal four thousand years ago with the navigable Euphrates.

In this way did a simple thing, like a Mussel-shell, reveal another long-lost secret" (David Masters' Romance of Excavation 1923, 152). In fact, the whole matter was much on all-fours with the Manchester Ship Canal.

The captor, Mr. G. H. Youden, is so good as to correct the dozen Harmodia compta at Trans, vi, 221. Actually eleven specimens were secured in his garden at 63 Salisbury-road in Dover during the course of five nights in June 1948, and at first mistaken for H. conspersa. We are glad to learn from him that the species, though not yet noted from Folkestone, is spreading, nearly a hundred examples being now known, and may ere long establish itself as British.

M O R E ABOUT AZOLLA.—I should like to remark upon the discovery of native Azolla filiciiloides (Trans, vi, 223) that I tried to introduce it at Bucklesham forty years ago ; but a farmer turned his Suffolk " Punches " into our pond : Azolla likes quiet waters !

I sent some plants from Cuffley near Enfield in Middlesex, where it was first naturalised in England, with the result that my father and two members of the Manchester Microscopical Society came all the way to be taken to the spot! Various people, after that, tried to grow it in Cheshire ponds ; but, I fear, it all died in a hard winter. A few years later, I saw it flourishing in a garden pool in Essex near Danbury ; but it does not seem to be commonly known to Suffolk botanists yet—(Miss) JANET C. N . W I L L I S .

M A T E TEA.—I am sorry Mate gave you such severe chest-burn indigestion. About a month ago I tried some, since it is recommended for its sustaining qualities, aid to digestion and prevention from rheumatism : I did not care for the flavour at all; and, after a few days of it, noticed uncomfortable feelings, so took no more. Actually this Mate, so populär in Brazil, is unrelated to Tea ; it is made from a species (Ilex Paraguensis, Linn.) of evergreen Holly, which grows in the mountains of Paraguay and is also known as Jesuits' Tea or Rimari Mountain Tea. It is widely drunk in South America [as is recorded a Century ago in Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle—Ed.]. The true China Tea-plant is Thea or Camellia theifera ; and the Assam or Indian Tea-plant Thea Assamica : quite distinct from Mate.—FRANCIS SIMPSON.