LAPWING. 103 



one or two at Hunstanton, with dunlins and sander- 

 lings and, about the same time, as Captain Longe 

 informed me, others were observed on Breydon. Yet 

 from these unusually late, but accidental occurrences, 

 there is no reason to suppose that the grey plover ever 

 remains to breed with us. 



There is little doubt, I think, as suggested by Mr. J. 

 H. Gurney, that the " white plovs," which occur once 

 in the " Household Accounts " of the L'Estrange's, of 

 Hunstanton, with other shore birds such as redshanks, 

 '^ stynts," and " sedotterel," were of this species in their 

 winter plumage. 



VANELLUS CRISTATUS (Meyer.) 



LAPWING. 



At the present day it is only tlirough the "tales 

 of a grandfather," or the traditionary lore of some 

 octogenarian, that one can arrive at any conception of 

 the former abundance of this species, whose numbers 

 for the last half century, at least, have been gradually 

 but surely decreasing. We must carry our minds back 

 to a period, by no means remote, when heath, warren, 

 and fen occupied in this county about the same pro- 

 portion that cultivated land does now, when, as has been 

 elsewhere stated "less than one hundred years ago, 

 Norfolk did not produce enough wheat to feed its scanty 

 population." When, even in the " Enclosed" district, 

 wide tracts of heath extended for miles tlirough the inland 

 portions, and an even wilder country as at Edgefield, 

 Kelling, Weybourn, and Salthouse, adjoining the coast, 

 was divided only by the then undrained marshes from 

 the sea-shore. When, on the east and west, the 



