262 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



plentiful enough in the Hockwold and Feltwell Fens 

 between twenty and thirty years ago, iintil banished, 

 with other species, by extensive drainage, and my friend 

 Mr. Roberts, who for many years practised as a surgeon 

 in that neighbourhood, assures me that he has seen 

 ruffs m the spring fighting in the Feltwell Fens. Even 

 now, should the autumn prove more than usually wet, 

 a few will occasionally frequent the "washes" for 

 a time, as occurred about two years since, when Mr. 

 Newcome obtained several specimens of both ruffs and 

 reeves ; and in the spring of 1853, after the " great 

 flood," this species with other former denizens again 

 resorted to the fens thus temporarily restored to their 

 normal condition. 



On the eastern side of the county, as far as one can 

 ascertain from our local records, they appear to have 

 been very generally distributed, more particularly in 

 the centre of the '* Broad" district, bordering upon 

 the banks of the Bure and its tributaries; and in 

 the valley of the Yare (in the very same locality 

 above cited from Sir Thomas Browne's notes), the 

 ruff was described as " common " by the Messrs. 

 Paget in 1834, " especially at Reedham and Acle." A 

 very beautiful series of ruffs, in the collection of Mr. 

 Spalding, of Westleton, were all taken in two days, 

 in the Buckenham marshes, between Norwich and 

 Yarmouth, some thirty years ago, prior to the formation 

 of the Great Eastern Railway, which now traverses 

 those once noted snipe grounds. 



The Winterton marshes, near Yarmouth, are inci- 

 dentally mentioned by Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear 

 as a nesting place of this species in 1817, where, I 

 believe, they were still met with in summer, within the 

 last fifteen or twenty years, and at Horsey within the 

 last five or six. For although the drainage of the salt 

 marshes in both those localities had long before banished 



