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 through 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 through the inland 
portions, and an even wilder country as at Kdgefield, 
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 
