298 NOTES ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 



rich in shore fowl and wild fowl as it Avas in decoys. Now, there are onlv two 

 decoys working in Essex. Gulleries (several), colonies of terns, and ringed 

 iplovers, and in the marslies redshanks, oyster - catchers, and snipe, and 

 n the sandhills the harmless and beautiful shell-duck, were once as 

 common in Essex as they are now in the preserved ' dunes ' and ' polders ' irh 

 Holland opposite, where I have seen them swarming on thousands of acres as 

 thickly as of old. Parts of Essex were indeed so full once of breeding wild fowl 

 and shore birds, that the}' might have taken a local name from them, as did the 

 island of ' E\Te-land ' by the Texel opposite.^ The young shore fowl used to be 

 fatted. P'uller says that there was an island of 2co acres near Harwich called 

 ' Pewit Island ' (pewits were black-headed gulls), of which they ' were in effect 

 the sole inhabitants. On St. George's Day precisely they pitch on the island, 

 seldom laying more than six or fewer than four eggs. Great is their love to their 

 young ones, for though against foul weather they make to the mainland (a sure 

 prognostication of tempests), yet they always weather it out on the island when 

 hatching their young ones, seldom sleeping when sitting on their eggs (afraid, it 

 seems, of spring tides), Mhich signifieth nothing as to securing their eggs from 

 inundation, but is an argument of their great aflTection.' Fuller is always good 

 reading when he deals M-ith what be calls the ' natural commodities ' of a county,, 

 and he adds to this sympathetic and quite correct description of the gulls that the 

 young ones when taken to be eaten consist only of bones, feathers, and lean 

 flesh ' which hath a raw gust of the sea,' but that they are fattened by the 

 poulterers on curds and gravel, which are meant both as food and physic, and that 

 their flesh thus ' recruited ' is most delicious. 



" The era of young sea gull pie will probably not return, but the Essex Bird. 

 Society's report says that owing to an inundation which has made Pewit Island a 

 swamp, this ancient gullery seems likely to be re-established. In spite of the 

 great inundations of 1898, which broke the Essex sea-walls, and the high tides 

 which flooded the salt marshes, the following reports show that birds have 

 increased there in the short time since the foreshore was protected. Bearing in 

 mind that total destruction overtook many breeding-grounds which looked most 

 promising (I have myself seen three miles of shore dotted with eggs all along, 

 high-water mark on the edge of a protected salt marsh in Norfolk), the report is 

 very promising. 



" The concrete results are that the ringed plover have increased generally. 

 The terns have been saved from extermination, and will soon, it is hoped, recover 

 their numbers as fast as they have at Wells. Until lately they were raided every 

 year by professional egg-robbers, who took the eggs and stuffed the poor little 

 terns, shooting the old ones later on when the ' season ' opened to stuff with 

 them. 



" jMr. George Hope, of Havering Grange, informs me that at Havergate 

 Island he heard that arctic, common, and lesser terns all did better than usual 

 this year, and that he saw more himself, and that he has seen a black tern (a 

 species which once bred in England, but now does not). 



" Outside the sea-walls are half dry saltings along scores of miles of the Essex 

 shore. The birds seem to have learnt that they are now safe there, and nest in 

 numbers where they did not before. It was there, unfortunately, that last year's 

 high tides overtook them. Gulls are increasing fast, mainly the small black- 



I Caesar notes that in his time the savages on the islands near the mouths of the Rhine 

 lived on fish and bijrds' eggs. 



