When Ducks by scores travers'd the 



Fens, 



Coots, Didappers, Rails, Water-hens." 

 " Antiquarian Hall," 

 The Fen-Man. 



IN the memoir of the Geological Survey of the 

 country round Cromer is a rough sketch-map of the 

 outline of the north-west corner of Europe as in all 

 probability it existed at the Newer Pliocene period, 

 in the far-off days when the primitive vegetation and 

 monstrous creatures of a still earlier world were 

 slowly giving place to plants and animals of " more 

 of the recent " types. 



A great river, since dwindled to the insignificant 

 Rhine, with its mushroom castles and ruins, swept 

 through fir woods and swamps to an estuary hemmed 

 in to the westward by a coast-line unbroken, except- 

 ing here and there by a tributary stream, to John 



