3 66 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



winter aspect than of summer days. He has given 

 us before a few pages of his somewhat wintry boy- 

 hood, glimpses of a naturalist's life that would amply 

 repay the attention of a Smiles. If Broadland were 

 not Broadland we might imagine that the struggles of 

 his youth had endeared him to the harsher aspects of 

 nature. But the plain fact is that winter is Breydon's 

 season, and not to know her then is not to know her 

 at her best. Certainly, in Mr. Patterson's latest book, 

 " Wild Life on a Norfolk Estuary " (Methuen), his 

 wintry pictures are the most entrancing. All the 

 tales of his Breydoners are of wild-fowl, icily, and 

 not seldom perilously, hunted, for Norfolk's rare 

 visitants, so many of which Mr. Patterson has re- 

 ported, very often come down to us on pitiless 

 northern weather. 



It is in winter that the wind-driven tide comes in 

 from the North Sea, as though Neptune were annually 

 reminded of the realm he has lost since the Romans 

 administered an archipelago where now continuous 

 land stretches from Norwich to the coast. Much has 

 been snatched from him by the forces of nature, but 

 all along Breydon the tides chafe against man-built 

 walls, and are often for hours together high above 

 the level of the fields within. Sometimes there is 

 no perceptible ebb, one tide coming in on the top of 

 another. In quite recent years more or less significant 

 breaches have been made, and Mr. Patterson predicts, 

 like many an old Breydoner in whom some dim wish 

 may be suspected of being father to the thought, 

 that some day Horsey will give way. The fact is, 

 however, that in the still open parts of Breydon 

 shallows and banks are growing annually more ex- 



