the phases of construction, but they are obviously largely due to soil creep. Not the
soliflucted slumping that occurs in winter on natural hill slopes elsewhere in the country,
but due to the extensive shrinkage in the marine alluvial clays of which they are
constructed, during hot dry summers. By mid-August this year, the wall surfaces were
criss-crossed by deep cracks, often 1 -2cm wide, the largest cracks appearing at the back
face of each of the steps, the steps themselves being levered forward as much as 5cm,
the freshly exposed soil beginning to crumble and infill the gaps.
Having spent two weeks surveying the marshes in detail for higher plants, returning
each day around 6.0pm, it was the last straw, when on two consecutive evenings, we had
to run the gauntlet of many millions of swarming ants along the entire length of the wall
on the southern side of the old creek. They literally poured out of the thousands of
cracks across the path on top of the sea wall, up ones trouser legs, inside ones glasses
and all over ones hair, and could be seen ahead of us as a swirling grey cloud along the
entire wall ahead. The bulk of them were the winged males of females of Lasius flavus,
but near to bushes along the wall, these were supplemented by Myrmica scabrinodis.
The swarming started at around 5.30 and went on until dark. We are all familiar with the
simultaneous swarming of Lasius niger colonies when the weather is sultry, but this
swarming was apparently a late evening phenomenon on bright sunny days.
Heritage plaque for Essex geologist
Gerald Lucy Saffron Walden, Essex
'Sherwood', the Loughton home of
perhaps the county's most accomplished
amateur geologist Samuel Hazzledine
Warren (1873-1958), has recently been
given a heritage plaque by Loughton Town
Council. Warren was a remarkable man
whose discoveries made him famous
throughout the academic world and his
home at 49, Forest View Road, on the edge
of Epping Forest was also a museum at
which he often entertained large groups
of Essex Field Club members. He was
twice president of the Field Club (from
1913-15 and from 1940-42) and
contributed more than 30 papers to the
Essex Naturalist. An account of Warren's life and work can be found in the Essex
Naturalist, volume 30, part 3 (1959).
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 49, January 2006
17