14 JANUARY IN BPOADLAND. 



man, a splendid specimen of the hardy fenman, pushes us off, and heedless of the 

 bubble-crested waves churned up by the rough wind upon the dark waters of the 

 Broad made darker still by the clouds above-head we are pulled across it. 



A bunch of wildfowl are disporting themselves in the chilly waters, while a 

 few of their number are preening their feathers upon the jagged ice held as at 

 anchorage by the reed-stems. Silently and motionless we now crouch in the boat; 

 the fenman, who has quietly glided into the stern, sculls her forward with a single 

 oar, whilst the parson, on his elbows and knees, places his finger upon the trigger 

 of the gun. Peering over the boat's rail, we observe that the ducks are becoming 

 alarmed, and are gathering into a more compact body, and those that were on the 

 ice have slid down and joined their companions. With a splash and a whirr, the 

 startled birds take to wing. We momentarily imagine that our host does not in- 

 tend to fire at them, but we are mistaken. It is the moment he has awaited 

 when the crowding birds shall close up and rise in a body from the water. With 

 a tremendous roar, and a recoil which throws us flat upon our face, the gun belches 

 forth its death-dealing contents. The parson has made a bag! As the smoke 

 clears off, and our boatman eagerly pushes us forward, several dead forms are seen 

 floating upon the surface; a wounded bird or two are stopped short in their efforts 

 to reach the reedy shelter by the shoulder-gun of the clerical sportsman. Nine 

 widgeon, a couple of mallard, and a golden eye, are the result of our shot. The 

 survivors have flown away seaward. 



Whilst our man is reloading, our ecclesiastical friend, evidently much elated 

 by his success, waxes chatty. 



i It is a matter for regret,' says he, i that the birds of Broadland have of late 

 years become scarcer.' Our looking at the victims in the boat draws forth a curi- 

 ous smile on his rubicund face. i Ah!' he added, 'you think such sharp practice as 

 this has had something to do with the decrease of our avi-fauna; and perhaps it 

 has; but it is not the gun altogether which has slaughtered off the birds, but the 

 drainage of the lowlands, the cultivation of waste-places', and the consequent 

 dearth of suitable food and shelter, or 'lay,' as the rustics term it, that have more 

 effectually driven them away. Before steam-mills had usurped the clanking 

 pump-mills, surplus water accumulated in the lowlands, and legions of wild-fowl 

 swarmed the marshes. The birds fed and frolicked in comparative safety, and in 

 positive plenty; and although great numbers were slain, they were but a small 

 percentage of those that remained. Cattle and corn and root-crops usurp the 

 places where the duck once swam in the puddles and the wading bird probed in 

 the shallows. The ruff and reeve and the bittern, which in my father's time were 



