THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB
DEPARTMENT OF LIFE SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON
ROMFORD ROAD, STRA TFORD,
LONDON, E15 4LZ
NEWSLETTER NO. 26 August 1998
THE PRESIDENT'S PAGE
On behalf of the Council of the Field Club, I offer our sincere apologies to the Essex
Wildlife Trust and its officers for the upset caused by the letter in Newsletter 24. A letter
later in this Newsletter from Colin Plant elaborates the matter. Council also thanks EWT
for their constructive attitude and looks forward to discussing ways of assisting with the
Trust's reserves.
Following on from this, I would like to report that Colin Plant, Ken Adams, Jeremy
Dagley and I met with John Hall and senior members of the Essex Wildlife Trust to
discuss issues arising from Colin's letter in Newsletter 24. The meeting covered many
matters and the concerns and problems of both sides were better understood as a result.
We look forward to a beneficial relationship with the Trust.
About this time last year, Colin Plant recounted his experiences in Poland. The Polish
connection continues. I have just returned from a geological trip to Poland and part of the
visit had an Essex connection. In the 1940s and 1950s, Frederick Zeuner wrote very
incisively about the Thames terraces and was very forward looking (by about 40 years) in
his views about their ages. Indeed several of the threads I brought out in my Presidential
Address in May stemmed from his work. Zeuner's PhD, completed in 1928, was on the
terraces of the Nysa to the south of Wroclaw (then Breslau, in Germany), where he was a
student. We revisited his work and even some of his original sites. Innovative work on
terrace stratigraphy is being continued by my host, Dr Daruius Krzyszkowski, in the
Wroclaw area and interestingly the role of tectonics in terrace formation is currently being
studied on both the Thames and the Nysa.
In the last Newsletter I touched on the role of Recorders. Since then, two initiatives have
come up in which the Recorders will have a valuable part to play. First, we have been
invited by English Nature to co-operate in producing a Red Data List for Essex. Council
is keen to support the project and is in the process of approaching the Recorders to assist.
Our participation would certainly enhance the public profile of the Field Club. The
second initiative is to co-operate with the Essex Wildlife Trust in providing recording
information for certain of their reserves so they can be managed effectively. This matter
will be taken forward in due course.
Peter Allen
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 26, August 1998