THE YORKSHIRE FEN 289 



pheasants are in the corn, or hidden in the plantations. 

 Rooks, jackdaws, and pigeons have flown far up into 

 the cultivated ground, the plovers have followed them, 

 the herons are asleep in the thick woods, before the 

 shepherd drives his flock to feed on the drying grasses 

 of the fen. 



In the great frosts the running streams which flow 

 from the upper ground into the " carrs " are an almost 

 certain haunt of wild-duck, and the writer was for many 

 years accustomed to visit the fen before breakfast, when 

 the only light was the topaz glow in the sky before the 

 winter dawn, and the moon had a planet opposite its 

 curve, as bright as that which shone when the Turks 

 stormed the city of Constantine. The way to the fen lay 

 along the side of a wood, below a park in which warm 

 springs rose from the limestone almost at the edge of the 

 flat. No frost, even those recently experienced, ever 

 froze this "dyke," to which the contrast of green weeds, 

 running water, and, in such weather, clouds of warm 

 vapour rolling from the surface, gave an almost tropical 

 appearance, while all the ground round was crusted with 

 snow and frost needles. The rush and flutter of the 

 water-hens in the thick rushes, the thin dry sound of the 

 reeds as they rustled and bent in the cold morning 

 gusts, and the darkness of the wood which fringed one 

 side of the water, made this one of the most unusual 

 scenes I have ever met with in English cultivated 

 districts. A brook below was the favourite haunt of 

 the duck, which fed in the warm dyke by night, and 



then lay in the brook which was still more removed 



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