CRANE-FLIES IN THORNDON PARK, SOUTH ESSEX 343
can of course be searched for in the winter and bred on in
captivity.
Since becoming interested in flies in 1958 I have paid a number
of visits to the mixed woodland south and south-east of Brent-
wood, and have collected crane-flies mainly along and near the
streams which flow from this ridge in a southerly direction towards
the Mar Dyke and the Thames. In places these have cut deep
channels down to the underlying clay and flow between steep
banks, while elsewhere they widen out into woodland swamps, as
on the western margin of Childerditch Wood and at the head of
Old Hall Pond. Almost all my own collecting has been done
within the extensive area now known as the Thorndon Park
Estate and administered by Essex County Council. This stretches
from the Bagshot Beds ridge at Lion Lodge southwards across a
broad belt of the Claygate Beds and Glacial Gravel on to the
London Clay at Childerditch Pond, while a detached eastern
portion runs from the golf course through Menagerie Plantation
and Old Hall Pond almost down to the Southend Arterial Road at
Mill Wood. But the present paper is intended to cover also the
adjoining woods which together with the Thorndon Park Estate
form this large oasis of uncultivated ground in mid-Essex.
I have taken the opportunity to gather up the very few records
from other dipterists that are available for this area, notably the
half-dozen species recorded by E. S. Brown on an excursion of the
South London Entomological and Natural History Society in June
1947. Although the precise locality for these records is not men-
tioned in the published report (Proc. S. Lond. ent. nat. Hist. Soc.,
1948: 63), the "South London" on their regular field meetings to
Brentwood under E. E. Syms and F. Stanley-Smith habitually
spent the day on and near Little Warley Common, which is con-
tiguous with Thorndon Park.
I must here express my gratitude to L. Parmenter, who has
kindly extracted for me from his extensive records of the London
area those referring to Essex localities.
The list of crane-flies that follows is only a preliminary one,
and will certainly be increased when more collecting has been done
in these woods. (For instance, none of my visits so far has been in
August or September.) It is published now in an attempt to
arouse interest among Essex entomologists in this neglected group
of insects. As well as the true Crane-flies (Tipulidae) I have in-
cluded also the allied families Trichoceridae (Winter-gnats) and
Ptychopteridae (Phantom Crane-flies), which are superficially very
similar insects. The arrangement of species is according to Kloet
and Hincks (1945), except where recent revision or nomenclatorial
change has necessitated alteration.
The months of occurrence (of the adult insect) refer only to
captures in the area covered by this paper. Unless otherwise
indicated, the records are my own, and are supported by speci-
mens in my collection.