216 THE ESSEX NATURALIST
We regret having to put on record the loss to the Club by the death of
several members. Miss Edith Prince was made an Honorary Member in
recognition of her work on the herbarium in the Stratford Museum. She
had been an active member since 1910. Mrs. E. M. Harley, the respected
mother of our Past President, had been a member for over '20 years. Mr.
Stanley Tiquet, elected in 1944, and Mr. A. W. Headley, elected in 1946,
were also respected members, and their presence at our meetings will be
missed.
The membership at 31st December, 1953, was made up as follows:—
Individual members, 197; Libraries, 10; Associated Societies, 8.
REPORTS OF MEETINGS
Ordinary Meeting (956th Meeting)
SATURDAY, 31 JANUARY, 1953
This meeting took place at 3 p.m. at the West Ham College of Tech-
nology. The President, Mr. Laurence S. Harley, took the Chair and the
attendance was fifty-four.
The following were elected to membership of the Club :—
Professor C. T. Ingold, B.sc, of Birkbeck College, University of
London, Malet Street, London, W.C.I.
Mr. Cecil Hustwayte, of 11, Haigville Gardens, Barkingside.
Mr. H. J. Owen, of 17, Woodland Road, Loughton.
Mr. C. J. Rawlings, of 32, Ferguson Avenue, Gidea Park, Romford.
Miss W. E. P. Rumbold, of 2, Blake Hall Road, Wanstead, E.11.
Miss O. M. Snow, of 18, Clive Road, Heath Park, Romford.
Mrs. Bartrop showed a tome entitled "An Illustration of the Sexual
System of Linnaeus" by John Miller, published and sold by the author
in 1777 at his house in Dorset Court, near Parliament Street, London.
The book, exhibited by permission of the Halstead Branch Librarian, Essex
County Library, contains a list of eighty-three subscribers, headed by
Queen Charlotte, and including Sir Joseph Banks, the British Museum and
the University of Gottingen.
Miller was an engraver and Linnaeus was one of his patrons. His
hundred or so engravings in this tome (each in duplicate, one plain and
one coloured) were all made from fresh specimens. The colours remain
bright and true. The text in Latin and English contains detailed descrip-
tions of each part of the plants illustrated and four letters to the author
from Linnaeus written from Upsala between 1773 and 1775 are also
reproduced.
Mrs. Bartrop also showed a water-colour of Bedford's Oak, Chingford,
painted in 1877 and this was presented to the Club's Pictorial Survey.
Mr, A. Macfadyen then gave a lecture on Soil Animals. He began by
showing lantern slides of the chief families of the Arthropods represented
in a typical soil fauna, e.g., Diptera, Coleoptera, Collemba and Acari. He
pointed out that the smaller animals should be divided into two groups—
those living in the water film and those living in the air spaces of the soil.
In contrast to these two groups, larger animals such as earthworms and
moles were able by their own efforts to make spaces in which they lived.
He described various methods of collection and quantitative estimation
and illustrated apparatus used. He called attention to the enormous
amount of work waiting to be done on the small animals which are often
very numerous and generally distributed in soils. The lecturer remarked
that in shallow soils earthworms were largely replaced by woodlice which
carried out similar functions. He then spoke of methods of comparing the
importance of the functions of various animals in the soil, by numbers, by
bio-mass and by respiratory activity