Ivi INTEODUCTION. 



peat, side by side witli the bones of the Beaver and tlie 

 Wolfj the Wild Boar and the Urus. If he enquire of 

 the inhabitants he will find their traditions extend only 

 a short way back — and he will be in doubt whether the 

 Goslings which his octogenarian informant may say 

 were tended in the fens by his grandfather, when a boy, 

 were the reclaimed offspring of really wild parents or 

 merely the tame race. The Gossard's occupation has 

 been gone for many a year — that of the professed fowler 

 still lingers, but it has entirely changed in character, 

 and a few more years will probably number the Snipe- 

 shooter among the things that were. There are, or at 

 least until very recently were, people who recollected 

 that a comfortable living might be made by netting 

 Ruffs and Reeves (Machetes pugnax) in summer, and in 

 winter by snaring Snipes, when the true fen-man — who 

 was seriously believed in other counties to be born with 

 a " speckled belly" and a web between his toes — did not 

 think his Sunday's dinner complete unless he had a 

 roast Bittern (Botaurus stellaris) on his board. 



But it will be more profitable to dwell on the changes 

 which have taken place within the last thirty or fort/ 

 years. No longer ago than that the three species of 

 Harriers (locally called "Buzzards" — and the grey males 

 of the two smaller ones, " Millers") with the Short-eared 

 Owl (Otus hrachyotusj swarmed in some parts of the 

 district — but as the water was carried off by the powerful 

 engines employed, and the sedge-fens converted into 

 corn-fields — their haunts were one by one destroyed, 

 and they themselves banished. The Marsh-Harrier 

 (Circus ceruginosus) was the first to go, and then the 

 Hen-Harrier (G. cyaneus), but even now the Montagu's- 

 Harrier (G. montagui) and the Short-eared Owl still 

 linger about such few of their ancient abodes as have 

 not passed under the plough, and occasionally may yet 

 be heard of as breeding there. The Grasshopper- 



