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.' 102
