xlii INTRODUCTION. 



call " as it were of the denizens of the marsh, so also 

 in the once wild portions of our coast line, reclamation, 

 planting, and high culture have changed alike the 

 features and the fauna of such districts. We need no 

 better illustration of this than is presented by Holkham, 

 where taste, judgment, perseverance, and capital, have 

 changed the once "open barren estate" into the most 

 ornamental, best farmed and, probably, the most remu- 

 nerative in the county. As the eye now wanders over 

 that magnificent park, with its rich meadows, lawns, 

 plantations, and shrubberies its noble avenues and 

 extensive lake, with green islets and winding, wooded, 

 shores the whole affording sufficient scope for a seven- 

 mile drive within its ample boundaries, it seems almost 

 impossible to realise its condition, when in 1734 the 

 first Earl of Leicester commenced building upon and 

 planting the dreary waste. * How many species then 

 strangers to the soil, have since been added to the 

 list of its feathered denizens ? Summer warblers in 

 abundance now enliven the groves, and the Song- 

 thrush and Blackbird, finding a sheltered haunt, join 



* "It was about the years 1725 and 1726 that the Earl of 

 Leicester, determining to fix his family seat at Holkham, after 

 making several purchases of intermixed lands and estates, began 

 to enclose the parish of Holkham. In 1728 he built a new farm- 

 house, &c., upon the distant fields on the west side of the parish, 

 at a place called Longlands. In 1735, he built another new farm 

 upon the old heath, on the east side of the parish, at a place called 

 Brenthill, and enclosed and cultivated the heath-land; thence- 

 forward, he gradually proceeded with enclosing and improving the 

 whole parish, dividing to himself, round about where he intended to 

 build his seat, and enclosing with pales, a park containing about 

 eight hundred and forty acres of land, and therein made many 

 plantations of wood, laid out lawns, gardens, water, &c., with many 

 useful and ornamental buildings, and nearly completed his manor- 

 house, begun in 1734, before he died." [See Stacy's "History of 

 Norfolk."] 



