39 



Report of the Seal Chart Field Meeting, May 27th, 1905. 



By Robert Adkin. Read January nth, 1906. 



Five summers ago I had the pleasure of inaugurating a series of 

 visits to the Kentish hills that nestle around the head-waters of the 

 River Darenth, and the Field Meeting held at Seal Chart on Saturday, 

 May 27th last, may be regarded as the concluding ramble of the 

 series. Not that the possibilities of the district have been by any 

 means exhausted, but the five meetings already held have, to my 

 way of thinking, given a very good general idea of that part of the 

 country, and as I hope to refer to the district as a whole later on, it 

 may be well to first briefly report the chief features of the meeting 

 more immediately under our notice. 



Seal Chart is one of those inconveniently situated places that are 

 neither very far from nor very near to any main railway station. To 

 reach it in the ordinary way one would take train to Bat and Ball, 

 Sevenoaks, Station on the L.C.&D. Railway, whence the " Chart " is 

 within an easy two miles' walk by the main road towards Ightham, 

 but as the train service to this station did not appear to offer the 

 necessary facilities for this occasion, the difficulty was overcome by 

 taking the South-Eastern line from Cannon Street to Tubs Hill, 

 Sevenoaks, Station, where the party was met by traps which conveyed 

 them to Seal village, arriving there at about 3.30, approximately an 

 hour after leaving London. 



The walk from the village to the Chart is about three quarters of 

 a mile along the high-road, bordered for the greater part of its dis- 

 tance by a low hedge on the left hand and on the right by an open 

 lath and rail fence enclosing well-timbered park-land. This fence is 

 well worthy of a passing glance ; I have at one time and another 

 found resting upon it such interesting species as Notodonta chao?iia 

 and Cidaria picata, besides numerous Eupithecice and other of the 

 commoner macros, and have seen it veritably alive with hosts of 

 small fry. At the end of the fence, or, to put it more correctly, at 

 its corner — for it is continued to the right along a rough lane down 

 a hill — the Chart commences ; it extends for a considerable distance 

 on either side of the road and some half a mile or more along it. 

 The Chart, I need hardly say, is a well-timbered piece of unenclosed 

 land, the trees upon it being chiefly fir, oak, beech, and birch, with 

 here and there sallow and white beam ; broom and juniper also grow 

 in isolated patches, and there are luxurious masses of bilberry over 

 large portions of the ground, together with good-sized patches of 

 heather and bracken. I may here mention that in spring the 

 bilberry affords, often in very considerable numbers, larva? of Hypsi- 



