NA TURE 



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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1887. 



A BA TCH OF GUIDE-BOOKS TO THE 



NORFOLK BROADS. 



Hand-book to the Rivers and Broads of Norfolk and 



Suffolk. By G. C. Davies. Ninth Edition. (London 



and Norwich : Jarrold and Son, 1887.) 

 The Land of the Broads. By Ernest R. Suffling. New 



Edition. (London: L. U. Gill, 1887.) 

 Three Weeks in Norfolk. By J. F. M. Clarke. (London : 



Wyman and Sons.) 

 A Month on the Norfolk Broads. By Walter Rye. 



(London : Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1887.) 

 Notes on the Broads and Rivers of Norfolk and Suffolk. 



By Harry Brittain. (Norwich : P. Soman, 1887.) 



SURELY no spot in the British Isles has been so 

 " beguided " as the Norfolk Broads. For the last 

 twenty years the literature of the subject has been on the 

 increase, till hardly a magazine or newspaper exists from 

 Blackwood to Excha7ige and Mart which has not opened 

 its pages to the flood of contributors on this apparently 

 fascinating subject ; and the whole has culminated in a 

 shower of guide-books which enlivens the railway book- 

 stalls with their gay exteriors, rendering it difficult to say 

 which of the twain is the more largely advertised — Col- 

 nian's mustard or the " Norfolk Broads." The bulk of the 

 " articles " are of the feeblest sort by people who, having 

 spent a few days on the Broads, returned to their 

 distant homes imbued with the erroneous impression 

 that they were qualified to enlighten the world with 

 regard to the features and peculiarities of a tract of 

 country difficult of access and still more difficult to 

 appreciate, and the very names of whose towns and 

 villages they had not learned to spell correctly. Some of 

 the more pretentious productions, by the aid of excellent 

 illustrations reproduced by various processes from photo- 

 graphs, and accompanied by maps, most of which have a 

 more than family resemblance, appear to carry a weight 

 of authority which their letterpress by no means warrants. 

 Another feature which strikes the reader familiar with 

 the country to which these articles refer is the supreme 

 self-reliance of their authors ; for although they contain 

 in some instances the most barefaced plagiarisms, it is 

 from one another that they borrow, and not from what 

 may be termed the standard authorities on the subject, 

 which probably some of the writers have never seen. 



It is remarkable that Mr. Stevenson's general descrip- 

 tion of the " Broad District " in the introduction to his 

 "Birds of Norfolk" (1866), perhaps the best ever 

 written, appears to be quite overlooked, whilst the Rev. 

 Rd. Lubbock's " Fauna of Norfolk " seems to be known 

 only to Mr. Davies and Mr. Brittain, and of course 

 also to Mr. Rye, who does not quote it simply because he 

 has no necessity, owing to the plan of his book, to do 

 so. A mere perusal of either of these two authorities 

 would have saved some of the writers from committing 

 what are palpable absurdities. 



Mr. Davies's " Hand-book to the Rivers and Broads of 

 Norfolk and Suftblk," first issued in 1882, and which has 

 now reached its ninth edition, of course claims priority of 

 notice both from its having been the first hand-book and 

 from its general usefulness. It is needless to say that from 

 Vol. XXXVI. — No. 933. 



the author's long and intimate acquaintance with the district 

 his' directions as to the best methods of procedure are 

 all that could be desired. In reviewing the first edition 

 of Mr. Davies's book the writer had occasion to make 

 some observations upon the false impression conveyed 

 by all the numerous writers on the Broads as to the 

 supposed abundance of legitimate shooting to be had by 

 the visitor ; we are glad therefore to see that, to use his 

 own expression, Mr. Davies has " put the break on a 

 little" in the present edition, but we could have wished 

 that in his remarks on "Shooting and Skating" (p. 170) 

 he had omitted the following passage : " The usual plan 

 is to row along the river while your dogs work through 

 the reeds on the bank inside the river wall, or embank- 

 ment, which generally runs parallel with the rivers on 

 each side," and had confined himself to the sensible 

 remark : " Don't take guns on board unless you have 

 leave to shoot on somebody's land." The yachtsman 

 may have the right to shoot in the navigable channel, 

 but it is as discreditable to work with dogs along any 

 proprietor's foreshore as it would be to do the same thing 

 from the Queen's highway ; and it is such acts as these, 

 added to the many others which Mr. Davies schedules, 

 which are gradually compelling the owners of the soil to 

 assert their rights more and more stringently. We cannot 

 agree with Mr. Davies that the disorderly conduct and 

 depredations which are becoming more and more notice- 

 able on the rivers are by any means " home products ; " 

 unfortunately there are some glaring instances of such 

 improprieties by Norfolk men ; but it is undoubtedly the 

 visitors from a distance, here to-day and gone to-morrow, 

 and who care not who may suffer for their rowdyism, who 

 thus misconduct themselves. It has been our lot more 

 than once to travel from London in a carriage full of 

 young fellows bound for Norfolk for a trip on the Broads, 

 and in each instance the gun-case and a liberal supply of 

 cartridges has formed part of their outfit, and this pro- 

 bably in the close time. Their eager talk of the big bags 

 and enormous catches of fish in prospect has often led us 

 to wonder whether these sanguine young fellows were 

 doomed to disappointment, or did their exuberant -spirits 

 and the joy and freedom of their untrammeled life on 

 the water cause them to make light of such trifles as the 

 non-fulfilment of their somewhat extravagant expecta- 

 tions? Big catches of fish are undoubtedly frequently 

 made, but almost invariably by the skilled habitu^, and 

 very rarely by the casual visitor. Mr. Davies's book is 

 increased from 108 to 173 pages, has twenty-three excellent 

 illustrations and a capital folding map, and is altogether 

 a very useful and readable book. 



The second book on our list is entitled " The Land of 

 the Broads," by Mr. Ernest R. Suffling. It originally 

 appeared in 1885 and in a subsequent edition in a gorgeous 

 cover, embellished by the portraits of a bird and a fish, 

 the former a great improvement on nature, and the latter 

 fearful to behold ; a still later edition is in a prettily got up 

 cloth cover, and the illustrations are for the most part ex- 

 cellent ; the letterpress is also increased from 80 to 322 

 pages. Mr. Suffling's book is much more pretentious than 

 Mr. Davies's, although he, like the rest of the authors we 

 shall have to mention, has adopted the narrative form, a 

 style excellent if accompanied by plenty of incident, but 

 rather tame otherwise ; it not only purports to be a guide- 



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