74 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
refer our readers to Mr. Stevenson’s ‘ Birds of Norfolk’ (vol. ii., 
pp. 82—84), as we have not room to quote it here. 
We have just mentioned Drayton’s ‘ Polyolbion,’ which gives 
as aimated a picture as well can be of Fen life*—but then again 
we come to another lamentable blank. The observant Ray, who 
lived so long on the borders of the district, and, as his ‘Itineraries’ 
show, more than once traversed it, has left us no connected 
account of its peculiarities, and what can be gathered from his 
and Willughby’s writings leads us to suppose they had never 
made any special study of them. There is perhaps one reason for 
the neglect ‘with which the Fens in their best time were treated, 
though we are not aware of its having been alleged before, and as 
it is strictly a zoological matter we may mention it now. They 
were doubtless most abominably infested by clouds of gnats, from 
which visitors would suffer torments. This is no mere supposi- 
tion. We have the evidence of the younger Thomas Browne to 
this effect. In his tour from Norwich to Derbyshire and further, 
in 1662, he had occasion to cross the Wash from Lynn to Boston, 
and he mentions two routes. Of that which he took he writes 
that it was ‘‘not troubled with flies with which all those fenne 
countrey’s are extreamly pestered.” + 
What would we not give to have had from that prince. of 
faunists, Gilbert White, an account of the Fenland during his 
stay in it? We have long known his opinion :—“I have often 
thought that those vast extent of fens have never been sufficiently 
explored. If half-a-dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good 
strength of water-spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, 
they would certainly find more species.” { And he had good right 
to give an opinion, since we learn from that interesting corre- 
spondence of his with Marsham which has only of late years been 
published, § that in 1746 he “lived for six months at Thorney, in 
* One especially remarkable feature is prominently brought forward in the line :— 
“There stalks the stately Crane, as though he march’d in warre,” 
reminding us of old Turner's earlier statement (in 1544) :—“ Apud Anglos etiam 
nidulantur grues in locis palustribus, & earum pipiones sepissime vidi, quod quidam 
extra Angliam nati, falsam esse contendunt.” Had this writer lived till the year 
1875 he might have found an Englishman taking the same mistaken view (Atheneum, 
No. 2625, p. 222). 
+ Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, &c., edited by Simon Wilkin, vol. i., p. 23. 
+ Letter xxii. to Pennant. , 
§ Trans. Norf. and Norw. Nat. Society, ii. p. 152. 
