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CHAPTER X. 
IEE BUS Hess: 
OF recent years perhaps no haunt of the collector has attracted to 
itself so much attention as the strip of shingle which runs along the 
Norfolk coast between Wells and Cromer. A large portion of this strip is 
interspersed with a thick dwarf scrub (Sueda fruticosa), rarely rising beyond 
three feet in height, especially at the beginning of August. The walking 
is atrocious, and the collector who visits the locality for the first time is 
almost sure to instinctively avoid what he will afterwards come to regard 
as the most interesting portion of his beat. 
But the day, or rather evening, soon arrives when, seated beside the 
operating table of the local taxidermist, he listens, for a time, indeed, with 
the ear of the sceptic, to the tales of surpassing rarities shot or observed 
upon this very beach. He hears how Messrs. Gurney and Power discovered 
that these bushes, for years immune and unfrequented by the gunner, 
are the regular resort of a vast army of migratory small birds, and that, 
given only a favourable wind, there is no reason why the choicest of the 
Warblers may not be brought home in triumph by the veriest novice that 
ever handled a gun. Well do I remember listening with incredulity to the 
story of the Yellow-browed Warbler at which some workman let fly his 
muzzle-loader merely to get rid of the charge; and of the Aquatic which 
flew thrice round a collector, while his companion vainly exhorted him to 
fire at what he believed to be a Sedge-Warbler, and not worth the 
expenditure of a cartridge. The glories of Dr. Power’s Barred and Icterine 
Warblers were also expatiated on for our edification, and, fired at length 
by the recital of these successes, and more especially by the appearance 
in the flesh of an Icterine shot by Mr. Robert Gurney, we determined on 
the next day to give the bushes a genuine trial. 
Now the bushes are a lottery and the prizes few; but there is a 
fascination about ‘‘doing” them, which appeals to young and old alike. 
One can always guarantee two hours’ solid exercise for the thighs, and 
an impromptu bath into the bargain if it happens to have rained during 
