XXll INTRODUCTION. 



is situated in tlie valley between Brundall and Coldham- 

 Hall, and has two outlets to the river. Further 

 down, but also communicating with the main stream, 

 is Rockland, covering- about sixty acres ; and Has- 

 singham, a much smaller but exceedingly pretty 

 Broad hes on the opposite side between Buckenham 

 and Cantley. In this locality, however, in strange 

 contrast to the banks of the Bure, cultivation 

 and drainage assert their supremacy. The Great 

 Eastern Railway, between Norwich and Yarmouth, 

 traverses some of the finest Snipe grounds of former 

 days, and, where Ruffs and Reeves abounded at no 

 distant period, grazing stock find pasturage at almost 

 all seasons. A considerable outlay also of late years 

 for dredging and setting back the ferries and other 

 obstructions, has deepened and widened the bed of 

 the river, and though broad " ronds" between Buck- 

 enham and Reedham, covered with a profusion of 

 coarse vegetation, afford ample harbour for many marsh 

 breeding birds, there is still a certain trimness, as com- 

 pared with the Bure, which accounts at once for the 

 absence of several former denizens."^ Yet, if these are 



* The Rev. Kirby Trimmer, in his " Flora of Norfolk," treating 

 of the geological formations of the county with reference to the 

 distribution of plants, thus speaks of the peat in the alluvial 

 district of East Norfolk : — " The peat of the Yare borders both 

 sides of the river with an average breadth of about a mile and 

 a-half from the Yare and Waveney canal to Surlingham ; above 

 which to Trowse, near Norwich, it contracts to half a-mile. The 

 widest part of the peat of the Bure is below the confluence of the 

 Ant and the Hundred Stream with that river, the breadth varying 

 from three miles at its northei^n and southern extremities, to about 

 a mile and a-half in the centre. Along the separate course of 

 these streams the breadth of the peat varies from half a-mile to a 

 mile on the banks of the Bure, from its junction with the Ant to 

 Wroxham; on the banks of the Ant from the junction before 

 mentioned to Stalham Broad ; and on the banks of the Hundred 



