262 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
plentiful enough in the Hockwold and Feltwell Fens 
between twenty and thirty years ago, until 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 in the spring fighting in the Feltwell Fens. Hyen 
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 
