Lost British Birds. 23 



largest and most disgusting I have ever seen. It is now quite 

 impossible in the north of England for any gamekeeper to 

 form such another museum to bear testimony to his zeal and 

 ignorance, as the so-called vermin no longer exist." Mr. 

 Dresser (Birds of Europe) says : " In Wales, Suffolk, 



BITTERN 



Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, and the 

 counties from Yorkshire northward, it has become historical." 

 In 1889 Mr. Howard Saunders (Maimed of British Birds) 

 wrote : " The Marsh Harrier is now all but banished from 

 the number of our indigenous birds. . . At the present day 

 a pair or two, probably colonists from Holland, almost 

 annually attempt to rear their broods in the Broad district 

 of Norfolk, but are rarely if ever allowed to succeed ; and I 



