The Fenland 7 



yards are not worthy of equal praise, but it is beset by great 

 meres and fens as though by a strong wall. In this isle there 

 is an abundance of domestic cattle and a multitude of wild 

 animals ; Stags, Roes, Goats, and Hares are found in its groves 

 and by these fens. Moreover there is a fair plenty of Otters, 

 Weasels, and Polecats, which in a hard winter are caught by 

 traps, snares, or by any other device But what am I to say 

 of the kind of fishes, and of fowls, both those that fly and 

 those that swim ? In the eddy at the sluices of these meres 

 are netted innumerable Eels, large Water- wolves even 

 Pickerels, Perches, Roaches, Burbots, and Lampreys, which we 

 call Water-snakes. It is indeed said by many men that 

 sometimes Isicii 1 , together with the royal fish, the Sturgeon, 

 are taken. As to fowls, let us, if it be not troublesome to you, 

 recount those which abide there and thereabout, as we have 

 done with the rest. There are numberless Geese, Fiscedulae, 

 Coots, Didappers, Water-crows, Herons, and Ducks, of which 

 the number is very great. At midwinter or when the birds 

 moult their quills 1 have seen them caught by the hundred, 

 and even by three hundreds more or less, sometimes they are 

 taken in nets and snares as well as by bird-lime 2 ." 



(iv) Minor Tracts. The river banks are usually marked 

 by a strip of alluvium of varying width, which gives rise to 

 flat ground often flooded in wet weather. This alluvium 

 varies in width. Below Cambridge it passes into the flat of 

 the fenland near Waterbeach. 



The ancient alluvia, deposited when the rivers ran at a 

 high level, form terraces more or less parallel to the present 

 river-courses, but often departing from strict parallelism, as 

 will be described more fully in the section devoted to geology. 

 They occur in all the valleys of the present rivers ; also in 

 certain now streamless valleys on the Chalk, and as long 



1 The reviewer suggests that this word means salmon, and the 

 suggestion is confirmed by another writer in the same volume of the 

 Zoologist, p. 222. 



2 Lib. ii. cap. 105 (ed. D. J. Stewart, 1848). 



