274
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Eledone Cirrosa at Frinton.—A female octopus, cast up by the
sea at Frinton on February 2nd, 1932, was identified at the British Museum
(Nat. History) as of this species, which is one of rare occurrence in the
southern part of the North Sea. Editor.
A New Essex Beetle.—In the Entom. Monthly Mag. for June, 1932,
Mr. C. M. Jarvis gives a preliminary notice of the occurrence at Loughton
on July 8th, 1911, of Bembidion dalmatinum Dej., var. latinum Net,
a coleopteron closely similar to B. nitidulum, but differing from that species
in the micro-sculpture of the elytra. This new addition to our county
fauna has only recently been identified by Professor Netolitzky, of Vienna,
to whom the specimen was submitted for examination.
Editor.
Scarlet Hopper at Buckhurst Hill.—This somewhat locally
distributed homopteron (Triecphora vulnerata) occurred numerously on
grass-stems and nettles on the railway embankment crossing the Roding
valley between Woodford and Buckhurst Hill, in June, 1932. Specimens
were secured for the Club's Museum. Editor.
Chrysopyxis Stenostoma at Woodford.—In the Journal of Botany
for May, 1932, Dr. Fritsch gives an account of this microscopic epiphytic
alga which, he says, seems to occur frequently in the Epping Forest
district, although not hitherto recorded in print for the British Isles.
He figures specimens from Woodford. Editor.
Licea Flexuosa Persoon: First Record for Essex.—In December,
1931, Mr. J. Ross found in Epping Forest, near Chingford, an extensive
growth of this species on an old oak log. It was associated with Colloderma
oculatum and Trichia Botrytis, and consisted of over forty roundish
sporangia and elongated plasmodiocarps. When first seen they were
freshly matured, shining dark brown, and appeared "to be coated with
slimy dirt," but this "dirt" proved to be the characteristic mottled layer
of dark granular refuse matter, extruded from the plasmodium before
spore-formation, with which the glossy sporangium-wall is usually more
or less overlaid. The spores are olive-brown in the mass ; when magnified
and seen by transmitted light they are pale olive and minutely warted
or spinulose ; they are spherical or broadly oval and their walls are marked
with a broad paler and smoother area, where dehiscence would take
place on germination. There is no capillitium developed in any species
of the genus Licea to assist in regulating the dispersion of the spores ; on
maturity the upper part of the sporangium-wall breaks up and the spores
are soon blown or washed away. Like most species of this genus, L,
flexuosa seems to prefer coniferous wood for its feeding grounds ; indeed,
except for a gathering in an old oak stump, recorded by M. S. Buchet
from the department Cher, Central France, in the winter of 1919, I know
of no other instance of the sporangia having been found away from pine
or fir wood. In England this species has been recorded from Somersetshire,
Hampshire, Worcestershire, Surrey, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Shropshire,
Yorkshire and Northumberland ; I know of no Welsh record, but it lias
been found repeatedly in Scotland and North Ireland. It is widely dis-
tributed throughout Europe and North America. Although the sporangia