160
THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
These closely correspond in position with the similar inscriptions upon modern
barometers, and therefore, by ignoring the scale, the instrument can be used as a
weather guide at the present time.
The thermometer which accompanies the barometer consists of a quill tube 24
inches in length, with a bulb 1.5 inches in diameter, containing a crimson fluid. It
is provided with the scale which was the first introduced by Fahrenheit, but which
was altered by him to that one which, slightly modified, is in use at the present
day. In his first scale Fahrenheit placed zero, as will be seen in the instrument
exhibited, at temperate, a point corresponding to 9° centigrade. He marked
that point above zero to which the spirit rose when the thermometer was placed
under the arm of a healthy man at 90°, and the temperature below zero of a
mixture of ice and salt (then believed to be the greatest possible cold) he also
marked as 90°.
The glass tubes of both the barometer and thermometer have every appearance
of being the original tubes. They are mounted upon a board which is decorated
in the Anglo-Chinese style, so frequent in the early part of the eighteenth century,
and the instrument was probably intended for the use of sportsmen, for in the
designs are included a greyhound, a hawk, and a pheasant.
Mr. Shenstone also exhibited some pieces of Septaria from the London Clay at
Walton-on-Naze showing the curious irregular vermiform, or fucoid stem-like bodies
which weather out into bold relief on the lumps of the rock strewed about the
shore. He had not been able to obtain any information as to the nature of these
bodies.
Mr. W. White exhibited clever models of toads, two being Japanese, and a plaster
cast of another, seated on a fox-glove leaf, was the work of a London sculptor. He
suggested that the production of such models of soft-bodied animals was worthy of
attention as they would be very useful in the educational department of a natural
history museum.
He also exhibited a very remarkable aberration of the larva of Sphinx ligustri,
which belonged to Lord Walsingham, who took it at Brighton in 1888. The larva
of S. ligustri very rarely exhibited any tendency to depart from the typical form.
Dr. Laver referred to a very beautiful form of this caterpillar which he found
in the grounds of the Colchester Workhouse on September 6th, 1882, and which was
figured in the late William Buckler's "Larvae of the British Butterflies and Moths,"
now being issued by the Ray Society (vol. ii, pp. no and 112, pl. xxii, fig. 2).
Mr. W. Cole exhibited a MS. which had recently been acquired for the Club's
library. It purported to be :—
" An exact Catalogue of all the MSS. and Papers belonging to Nicholas Jekyll
of Castle Hedingham in ye county of Essex, Esqre, collected by T. Jekyll of
Bocking in the county aforesd, Esqre, his Grandfather, most of wch are in my
Custody, & wch I've chiefly made use of in compiling of my History of Hinckfd
Hundred, per me, Will. Holman of Halsted Essex. July 25, 1715."
Gough in his "Anecdotes of British Topography" (1768) says :—
" Considerable progress [towards a history of Essex] was made by John Ousely,
rector of Pantfield, Springfield, Boswell, and Little Waltham in the last century
(17th) and beginning of the present..... He spent a considerable time in
making collections, receiving assistance from some of the gentry, but principally
from Nicholas Jekyll of Castle Hedingham, who just before the Civil Wars amassed
a great deal of matter for this purpose. Ousley's papers were in the year 1710 in
the hands of Wm Holford, his son-in-law, and successor at Little Waltham, who
offered them to Lord Oxford, and afterwards communicated them to Wm Holman,
a dissenting minister at Halsted, who spent 20 years in a diligent search after