Journal of Proceedings.
v
I send for exhibition herewith, on behalf of my aunt, Mrs. J. Smith, of
Great Saling (whose property it is), a specimen of the Serotine Bat (S.
serotinus, G.), which was shot nearly thirty years ago in the garden at
Pattiswick Hall, near Coggeshall, Essex. The Bat was stuffed by
Earthy, a taxidermist, of Coggeshall. This seems to be all the informa-
tion existing with reference to the specimen. The name of the species
does not occur in Mr. Doubleday's list of the Bats frequenting Epping
Forest (' Zoologist,' i., p. 6),* nor in Mr. Laver's list above referred to, so
that I believe the present is the first record for the county. According to
Bell ('British Quadrupeds') it is a local and apparently a rare species,
found only in the South-eastern parts of England. He adds that it is
said to occur in the neighbourhood of London, and that he had examined
specimens from Folkestone and the Isle of Wight. Bearing these facts in
mind it is quite possible that it is not very rare in Essex, being perhaps
often confounded with the Common Noctule (S. noctula), which it very
closely resembles.
[Mr. Christy added measurements of the length of the parts of the
body, &c., but as these were taken from the stuffed specimen exhibited,
which is evidently considerably shrunken and otherwise altered, it is not
advisable to print them.—Ed.]
The President detailed the steps taken by the officers of the Club and
others in opposition to the High Beach Railway Bill, and then called
upon Mr. Meldola, who read the paper "On the Conservation of Epping
Forest from the Naturalists' Standpoint," which was printed in extenso
in the last volume of the ' Transactions' (vol. iii., Appendix No. 1, pp.
xxv.—xxxi.) The reader of the paper was warmly and frequently
applauded, and after a long discussion carried on by the President, Mr.
E. N. Buxton, Messrs. Meldola, Gould, W. Cole, and others, a cordial
vote of thanks was passed to the authors of the various papers.
At the Conversazione Mr. R. Letchford exhibited under the microscope
the larva of a Gnat (Corethra) by means of polarized light, and Prof.
Boulger showed some portraits of Essex botanists. Mr. Hope's specimens
of sea-weeds from Harwich were also on view.
Thursday, March 9th, 1883.
A. large and important deputation, called together by the Club, but
attended as before, by gentlemen empowered to represent most of the
Natural History Societies of London and its environs, as well as a large
section of Londoners interested in the preservation of Epping Forest as a
free and natural open space, waited upon Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson and
Lord Eustace Cecil in the Conference Boom of the House of Commons.
The deputation was introduced by the President, Prof. Boulger, and the
various arguments against the proposed extension of the Great Eastern
* Nor in a paper entitled "The Bats of Epping Forest," by the late Edward Newman,
F.L.S., printed in the 6th Edition of Mr. Henry Walker's ' Saturday Half-Holiday
Guide' (1874), from which the list of Epping Forest bats in the Appendix to Mr.
Meldola's "Inaugural Address" ('Transactions,' vol. i., 23) was taken.—Ed,