BROADLAND IN WINTER 365 



is first checked, then killed and cut away by nip- 

 ping wind and wave. Fecundity abdicates, and, by 

 gigantic slaughter and competition, life microscopic, 

 small and large, is by painful stages brought down 

 towards a mid-winter level. Superfluous animalcule 

 are packed into small creatures ; superfluous small 

 things into big ones ; and the remainder go prowling 

 about in the keen, clean atmosphere, whether aerial 

 or aqueous, ravening, but enjoying life as lotus-eaters 

 cannot do. 



Broadland awakes to new and tumultuous life when 

 great flocks of lapwings and golden plover struggle 

 over the North Sea, to rest, dead beat, on the flats 

 nearest to the sea, when countless small birds from 

 the Continent come in for the winter, aptly mixed 

 with the Norway bunting called " snow-flake," when 

 thousands of black-backed gulls, in immature and 

 adult plumage, perch on the ronds, when, every day, 

 the great " V's " and " W's " of ducks and geese waver 

 across the sky, and late solitudes become populous 

 with sheld-ducks, scaup, widgeon, pochard, golden- 

 eye, and countless other refugees from the " north 

 wind that blows." It is then that the natives of 

 Breydon and Oulton take down their fowling-pieces, 

 reship their carronades, and launch their flat- 

 bottomed boats for a cruise strictly on their own 

 account. There are no longer open-handed tourists 

 to enable one to earn an artificial living. Existence 

 is once more based on first principles, and Norfolk 

 is once more a pristine land in which the hunter lives 

 precisely by what he catches. 



That native naturalist of the Broads, Mr. Arthur 

 Patterson, always has more to tell us about their 



