264 



THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 



out either by groups of boys or by individuals'. The 

 intention was to produce a separate plant list and 

 'By publishing these longer notes here ... it is hoped 

 to avoid overloading the list with data'. 



No copies of Coulson's first plant list (published 

 in June 1941) appear to have survived, but copies 

 of the second edition, which included more than a 

 hundred additions, exist in the WANHS library 

 archive. Subsequently, both this list and a List of 

 Fungi, written by Coulson in September 1945, were 

 united in the Flora Lisfpublished on 25 July 1952, 

 five years after Coulson's departure for Oundle.The 

 compilation of this list was mainly the work of two 

 sixth formers S.B. Chapman and A. A. Hooper, who 

 were able to add lists of Algae and Bryophytes; more 

 than one hundred species of flowering plants; seven 

 ferns; and thirty fungi. 



According to a manuscript note added by 

 Hamilton to the copy of the Botanical Bulletin in 

 the archive: 'In 1940 Mr Coulson was called up, 

 and the Botanical Bulletin and other publications 

 for which he was responsible, passed into the hands 

 of the Natural History Society. Under my 

 editorship, the title was altered [to the Biological 

 Bulletin] and remained thus after Mr Coulson's 

 return from the Forces.' Only three editions of the 

 new Biological Bulletin appeared (in April 1941, 

 September 1942 and January 1947) before it was 

 abandoned. 



Together, the four Bulletins, which are numbered 

 consecutively, contain almost forty articles most of 

 which detail experimental work and field 

 observations. Of those of local interest, one records 

 the results of an ecological survey of Druid's Lodge 

 on Salisbury Plain. Others record new species to the 

 area including Amoeba limicola and the spider 

 Scytodes thoracica. Another spider, Epeira fasciata, 

 sent to Hamilton by a resident of Westonbirt, was 

 reported as having recently arrived in Britain, and 

 he included large scale drawings so that it could be 

 looked out for in the West Lavington area. 



One might have expected that the fierce 

 commitment to research and publishing exhibited 

 in 1939 would have lapsed after the start of the 

 war, particularly given Coulson's departure to the 

 front, but that was not the case. In 1941, for 

 example, six expeditions were mounted to local sites 

 in addition to those involved with the preparation 

 of the annual Speech Day exhibit, and the fifth and 

 sixth editions of the Magazine, the annual Report, 

 and the Biological Bulletin were all produced. Other 

 work involved an extensive amount of card indexing 

 (these cards are presumably those preserved in three 



boxes in the archive), the up-dating of the species 

 lists, and three business meetings at which a new 

 constitution was agreed. That all of this was 

 achieved was in large part due to Hamilton, whom 

 G.H.Wiltshire, the new Secretary, noted had 'typed, 

 reproduced, and largely written' all the publications. 

 The opening paragraphs of the annual Report for 

 1948 attempted to do justice to Hamilton's 

 achievements, but the writers had only been 

 involved with the Society for two terms and tacitly 

 admitted they had little knowledge of what had gone 

 on before. They do, however, pay tribute to his work 

 on the fauna of the area around the school, and 

 particularly to 'the great effort that he made to bring 

 the Fauna List up to date during the Summer Term 

 of the last year'. 



The Dauntsey Fauna List 1931-1948, being a 

 corrected and updated version of the earlier Fauna 

 List, must surely remain not just the greatest 

 monument to Hamilton's labours, but to those of 

 the members of the Natural History Society too. 

 Published in parts between 31 December 1946 and 

 27 June 1948 (see below), it lists 879 species in 

 579 genera recorded by 106 observers, to which 

 could be added 119 birds from the Bird Trust's list, 

 making a total of 998 species, 762 more than in the 

 first edition. Bound copies in the archive also 

 include the fungi list of September 1945 and the 

 second edition of the plant list of September 1944 

 which together add a further 495 species to this 

 total. 



A study of the lists of spiders and beetles 

 suggests that approximately 33% of the names have 

 changed and approximately 8% of species have been 

 split into two or more species since the List's 

 production. In addition, question marks hang over 

 the determination of some of the more difficult 

 species, which cannot be resolved without sight of 

 the original specimens. But, in spite of these 

 problems, there are many records which can be 

 accepted with confidence. Indeed, for the 

 contemporary biologist, struggling to understand the 

 nature of one of the most poorly recorded counties 

 in England, the list is very precious and there is good 

 reason to be very grateful to the members of the 

 Dauntsey's Society for producing it. 



Given the level of Hamilton's input it was hardly 

 surprising that, after he left Dauntseys in 1 947, there 

 was a rapid falling off in the amount of work and 

 number of publications produced by the Society. 

 Even by 1948 the expedition programme had been 

 reduced to two outings, one of which was to study 

 marine fauna and flora at Lulworth Cove. 



