THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
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cones are then about half-an-inch long, while the abundant male catkins,
the largest of any Conifer, are two inches long. The pollen grains sift
between the open scales of the cone to where the micropyles of the inverted
ovules, expanded to form a flower-like funnel, are admirably fitted to
receive them. The micropyles of each pair of ovules (two to each cone-
scale) are directed backwards under the scale; judging from what occurs in
a similar flower-like micropyle in the Larch, after pollen has been received
it is shut in by the edges of the micropyle contracting. Fertilization does
not take place till the following June, nine months later, when the barrel-
shaped cones have attained their full size. The seeds are ripe seventeen
months later, when the cone-scales and wide-winged seeds fall away from
the spike-like axis and are dispersed by winter winds.
Mr. Scourfield showed a specimen of the green filamentous alga, Zygo-
gonium ericetorum, which forms purplish patches on damp ground 011
Leyton Flats and elsewhere.
The Curator exhibited various photographic views of Chingford and
Sewardstone from the Club's Pictorial Survey collection. He also showed
a selection of British Lichens, collected by W. Joshua, of Cirencester, a
well-known 19th century lichenologist, and also others collected by Miss G.
Lister and her father; the specimens had all been presented to the Stratford
Museum by Miss Lister, and had there been remounted and the synonomy
brought up-to-date.
Mr. Thompson also exhibited five manuscript volumes of notes on
natural history and cognate subjects by the late Mr. Miller Christy, which
had been presented to the Club by Mr. Gerald Christy. Three of the
volumes consist of diary-notes of various natural history observations
made by the writer, commencing in September, 1877, and continuing up
to the year 1925. The notes cover an immense range of subjects, ornitho-
logical ones being specially numerous. The very latest one is of an in-
teresting observation of birds drinking out of the cups formed by the
connate leaves of the Teasel; the writer notes that the observation justifies
the French term—cabarets d'oiseaux—for these cups. An earlier volume
of notes, compiled during Christy's schooldays at Bootham School, York,
between 1874 and 1877, has been presented to the school library; it is signi-
ficant of the future man that his form-master described him as "one of the
most disorderly of small boys," who much preferred natural history avoca-
tions to ordinary class work.
A fourth volume consists of various essays and articles on natural
history, archaeological and cognate subjects, some of them original, others
copied, written between the years 1877 and 1880; and the fifth volume
forms part of the transactions of the "Sociable Grosbeaks," a small private
natural history society founded by Christy in 1877, when only 161/2 years
old, in which all the members were personal friends and each of whom
adopted a nam de plume, Christy himself being "Rusticus," others being
known as "Dabchick," "Dodo," "Cormorant," "Q.E.D.," "Eboracus,"
etc. The "Sociable Grosbeaks" died the usual death of such societies in
January, 1881.
Mr. Scourfield read his Report as Club's Delegate to the Conference of
Delegates of Corresponding Societies at the British Association meeting at
Bristol in September.