CHAPTER XX 



THE LAKE VILLAGE 



An enthusiastic excavator — Inhabiting two worlds at once — 

 The wind in the bulrushes — Drayton on bird life in the fens 

 — A visionary multitude of wild birds — Crossbills in the 

 Mendips — Among the bells in St. Cuthbert's tower. 



FROM the abbey to the prehistoric Lake Village 

 is but a step of two miles, and here I spent 

 agreeable hours with Dr. Bulleid, the dis- 

 coverer and excavator of this little centre of British 

 life of the dawn, turning over his finds dug out of the 

 black, peaty soil. Here is an enthusiast if you like 

 — there are some in the south! — a busy doctor who 

 works every day of the year in his practice, excepting 

 when he takes an annual summer holiday of a few 

 weeks and spends every day of it, from morn to dewy 

 eve, at the excavations, studying every spadeful of 

 earth thrown up by his dozen diggers. My chief 

 interest was in the bones of the large water-birds on 

 which the lake-dweller subsisted, and the weapons 

 with which he slew them — the round, hard clay balls 

 which were hurled from slings. 



From the village I rambled on over the bed of the 

 ancient lake to its deeper part, which is still a wet 

 marsh, though partly drained and intersected with 

 hedges and dykes. Here there are large areas of boggy 

 ground so thickly grown over with cotton-grass that 



at a little distance it looks like an earth covered with 



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