A HIStORY OF SUFFOLK 



and south, east, and west, and along the Ouse River on the north, are 

 all most prolific ; but especially Town Street, the island by the Staunch 

 (which is not strictly in Suffolk), and the high sandy fields by the water- 

 works. It is all grand collecting on the sandy Thetford Warren, to Elveden 

 and Wordwell ; many good things were found in the old days at Livermere, 

 and then we get back to the greasy heavy lands about Mendlesham, Deben- 

 ham and Monk Soham, or keep along the northern rivers. Little Ouse and 

 Waveney. The latter is good for insects at Wortham and Bungay, and at 

 Beccles begins to broaden out into the Suffolk Broads, which at Barnby and 

 Oulton are in no way inferior to those larger ones of Norfolk. Continuing 

 north-east we find the coast at Gorton cliffs prolific ; and it is one of the 

 best localities for Aculeates in Britain — through Lowestoft, Kessingland, 

 Benacre and Covehithe and Easton Broads to glorious Southwold. Southwold 

 is an island : to the north are sandhills and sandy heaths ; to the south are 

 salt marshes along the River Blyth, the valley of which is all sweeping sandy 

 heath ; and this light soil stretches out southward to Westleton, Dunwich, 

 Snape, and Aldeburgh ; and yet farther south to Bromeswell, Butley, Orford, 

 Hollesley and Alderton: anywhere in this 40-mile coast, or within from 5 to 

 10 miles of it inland, good things are constantly turning up, and at Staverton 

 is a genuine primeval forest, well worth a visit. Felixstowe is no better 

 than the rest of the coast, though oftener visited, and its brackish ditches yield 

 well to the water-net. The whole peninsula of which it forms the apex, 

 with its bases at Woodbridge and Ipswich, is sandy land, and the heaths at 

 Nacton, Martlesham, and especially Foxhall, have added species to the British 

 list. The valley of the Gipping is worth a final excursion, for here is where 

 Kirby took most of his classic bees at Barham ; Glaydon Bridge, Bramford, 

 Great Blakenham and the chalk-pits at Little Blakenham are all productive of 

 their particular marsh and chalk insects.^ Roughly we may say that the 

 county is noted for its marsh insects at Tuddenham and Barton Mills in the 

 west, Oulton and Barnby in the north-east, and the salt marshes at Benacre, 

 Southwold, and Felixstowe ; for its heath or ' breck ' insects about Brandon, 

 Elveden, and Icklingham, which are very different from the ordinary heath 

 insects of the coast sands and Foxhall ; and, in a less degree, for its forest 

 insects at Bentley, Assington, Tostock, and Staverton. It is just this variety 

 of wooded heavy land in the south, chalk in the west and south-east, sandy 

 valley-gravels in the north-west, and light heathy coast line with its external 

 salt marshes, that enables us to enrol six and a quarter thousand different kinds 

 of insects in the list for Suffolk, 



ORTHOPTERA 



Earwigs, Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, S-c 



Even if we include the Dermaptera or earwigs, there are only about forty different kinds of 

 these voracious and interesting insects in Britain, so it is hardly surprising to find that just half this 

 number have been found to inhabit Suffolk. Of our forty kinds several were not originally natives, 

 but have, at various more or less remote periods, been introduced in ships plying between 

 English and Eastern ports. Some of them are of such extremely rare occurrence as to be regarded 

 as only casual visitors ; and others so nocturnal and retiring in their habits as to be but rarely seen, 



' Cf. Ent. Mo. Mag. 1897, p. 265 : 'A Day in Kirby's Country.' 



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