AVOCET. 239 



Selby* in 1824 " Horsey is a most extraordinary place 

 for all sorts of wild birds, though nothing as good as it 

 was ten years ago. It is a desolate spot, and duty at 

 church is performed only once a month, and in winter 

 this place is scarcely approachable." In the same letter, 

 also, the avocet or "shoe-awl," is described as still breed- 

 ing there, but, as shown before, reclamation had already 

 banished them with other contemporary species, whose 

 numbers had been slowly but surely diminished by other 

 and less justifiable causes. Mr. Lubbock, in 1845, speak- 

 ing of the numbers of this species that formerly bred at 

 Horsey, remarks that it "has not done so of late years,"f 

 but adds, " on the authority of an old and respectable 

 fen-man, it bred regularly forty years ago near the 

 Seven-mile House, on the North River; occurs still 

 sometimes on Breedon. The last I know of positively 

 in the fens, was a small flock which visited Button 

 broad in 1828." As at the present day only stragglers, 

 or at most a pair or two, are ever seen on our coast 

 at one time, it is not improbable that the small flock 

 here mentioned reappeared in that neighbourhood with 

 some intention of resuming their old quarters, if undis- 

 turbed ; and we may conclude, therefore, that they 

 had altogether ceased to breed in the " Broad" district, 

 some time between the years 1824 and 1828. It seems 



* For the privilege of extracting this and other passages on 

 Norfolk ornithology, from the correspondence of the late Mr. Selby, 

 I am indebted to the kindness of his daughter Mrs. Antrobus, at 

 the solicitation of my friend Mr. Alfred Newton. 



f Mr. Lubbock also refers to a communication by the Kev. E. 

 Yentris, of Cambridge, to the " Magazine of Natural History " 

 for 1836, in which the writer states that he had been recently 

 informed that the egret " annually visited Horsey, in Norfolk, till 

 about twelve years ago, and that since that time it has disappeared." 

 This unquestionably was a mistake, the avocet and not the egret 

 being intended, as before shown (p. 150) in my remarks on that 

 rare visitant. 



