306 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
testimony of such a witness with no ordinary interest. 
It would be needless here to repeat the picture I have 
drawn in the introduction to this work of the condition 
of Norfolk some fifty or sixty years ago, as compared 
with its present state as a great agricultural county ; 
but the changes which have gradually though exten- 
sively prevailed throughout that period, will sufficiently 
account for the very considerable diminution in the 
number of snipe that are now met with in autumn, 
both resident and migratory. It must be remembered, 
however, that whilst, within our own boundaries, the 
western fens retain scarcely any of their original features, 
and the fowler’s occupation is gone in the now culti- 
vated “ Marshland; ” that whilst in the “Broad” district 
the snipe-grounds have been everywhere curtailed by 
extensive drainage—the drier marshes of former days 
being now arable land, and the more swampy portions 
rendered “too good” for snipe; that whilst throughout 
the county the enclosure and cultivation of heaths, 
commons, and other waste lands, have deprived the 
snipe, the lapwing, and the redshank of many thousand 
acres of their former haunts, the same indications of 
an advanced civilization are apparent elsewhere.* Such 
* Mr. Alfred Newton tells me that at Barnham, near Thetford, 
and bordering on this county, on the property of the Duke of 
Grafton, there was some five and twenty years ago, a small but 
singularly productive breeding-ground of this species. It con- 
sisted of a piece of low land, only a few acres in extent, lying on the 
west side of that parish midway between the Elveden boundary 
and a slight rising ground called Hunhill. The water from a 
perennial spring formed a little stream which wound round and 
about for a long way before it made its escape, and after much 
rain overflowed the whole spot, whereon peat had formed, and 
in consequence there grew thickly such vegetation as commonly 
flourishes in similar places, while all around the soil was dry and 
sandy, thinly clothed with short grass studded with scrubby heather 
and furze bushes, hardly frequented by any birds. But this little 
