The Face of the Wilderness 287 



at the same impulse of the cold. The waterfowl 

 driven southwards into unfamiliar regions are 

 drawn down where the glint of the frozen flood- 

 waters shines pale on the ancient marsh. There 

 is no time when the older aspect of low-lying 

 tracts is brought back so vividly to modern senses 

 as when the cries and subdued chatter of the 

 wildfowl are heard from the frozen meadows in the 

 dusk of the afternoon, or when, on some chance 

 noonday alarm, snipe and mallard are seen uneasily 

 shifting above the glittering landscape. Alike to 

 sportsman and naturalist, such spells of frost bring 

 in a keener form the same sense of discontinuity 

 with the normal round as the shore-line in the 

 flooded meadows. An England is brought back of 

 ampler and wilder nature, haunted by a more 

 varied fauna than that of to-day. 



Many former tracts of marshland are also visited 

 for a time by marsh-loving birds on their regular 

 migrations in spring and autumn. Even where 

 the bygone marsh has been drained, banked, and 

 fenced, and cultivated as pasture and tillage, the 

 migrating marsh birds will often still halt upon it 

 and appear to make trial of its capacity, so long 

 as there is any vestige left, in wetness of soil or 

 reedy and secret channel, of the ancient character 

 of the spot. Golden plover appear in April in the 

 wet fields of many hillside farms, and vanish again 

 after a few hours or days, on finding how the land 

 is scored with fences, trampled by grazing cattle, 

 and overrun by the restless menace of man. In 

 the water meadows of the southern counties, where 



