378
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
and turned back to the bank. Now, however, it carried an object
in its mouth, which looked like a large water snail.
Holding its head high, it swam straight back towards the bank,
pushing onto and through the leaves it encountered in its path.
This whole operation was repeated some dozen times as I watched;
the shrew never went more than three yards from the bank and
its routine was unvarying.
R. W. Brewster.
Obituary
EDGAR ERNEST SYMS, 1881-1966
I am grateful for this opportunity to pay a tribute to Mr Syms
on behalf of the members of the Club. He was a naturalist in the
best sense, in that he loved all the plants and the birds and the
insects. Moreover, he was not content to admire but his interest
led him to watch and to study in detail the habits of the insects
which he encountered.
For many years he was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological
Society and of the Zoological Society and a member of the South
London Entomological and Natural History Society and of the
Amateur Entomologists Society. He joined the Essex Field Club
in 1913 and was elected President for the years 1956 to 1959. In
1963 the Club, anxious to show its appreciation of his work, made
him an Honorary Member—an unprecedented step I believe, in
the case of one who had already been President.
For several of the difficult post-war years he worked in the
Passmore Edwards Museum as honorary curator, where his care
of the insect collections saved them from the ravages of the war
years. For three years he served as a member of the newly
formed governing body of the Museum.
He amassed a large collection of entomological books and
periodicals over the years and, finding that little was known of the
life history of many insects, he bred out and photographed the
stages of a number of species. His own photographs were sup-
plemented by his acquisition of original photographs by Hugh
Main and H. W. Dennis and he was often able to provide authors
with the photographs which they needed for publication. His
collection of lantern slides is now in the care of the South London
Entomological Society.
E. E. Syms's original work included the breeding of several
species of Mecoptera (Scorpion Flies). His results and fifteen of
his photographs were published in the Proceedings of the South
London Entomological and Natural History Society, 1933/34,
p. 84. The results of his studies of some Megaloptera (Snake Flies)
appeared in the same journal 1934-35, p. 121. In 1936, as Presi-
dent of that society, he published his observations, together with