PREFACE. Vili 
work. Under these circumstances, I determined to adopt 
the former alternative, and rather than divide so im- 
portant and well defined a group as the Anatide, I have 
closed the present volume with the Gralle. 
In treating of this large and most important group, 
so extensively represented, both in residents and mi- 
erants, within the bounds of this county, I have taken 
much pains to trace out the history of such species 
as have ceased altogether to breed in Norfolk; thus 
for all time to establish facts, which, years hence, under 
the altered condition of the soil, might be scarcely 
credited. But for the testimony of Sir Thomas Browne, 
modern ornithologists would never have supposed that 
the Spoonbill nested in Norfolk some two hundred 
years ago, and yet, with the exception of the Cormorant, 
no other indigenous species appears to have been lost 
to this county from the reign of Charles II. until the 
early part of the present century. Since that time, how- 
ever, beside the Great Bustard, and from causes which I 
have elsewhere treated of, no less than three species, 
once abundant in our marshes and fens during the 
breeding season, have become altogether extinct—the 
Avocet, the Black Tern, and the Black-Tailed Godwit ; 
while the Ruff and Reeve, represented only by a few 
pairs and in but one locality, must shortly be added to 
the list if the timely protection of the law be not invoked 
to prevent it. So strong is, I believe, the attachment 
of certain birds to the place of their birth, and so un- 
erring the instinct which directs them, though absent 
in winter, to return year after year to the same spot, 
that, provided only a single pair survives to represent 
an indigenous race, the ancestral haunt will not be 
deserted; but if that last native pair be destroyed their 
place is rarely,* if ever, again filled, even though many 
* As exceptions may be mentioned, the Hen Harrier and Mon- 
tagu’s Harrier, which still, occasionally, remain to nest in our 
