38 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 441 



creep in insidiously, each generation growing rank and dying to 

 make soil on which the next may find a footing for another step 

 inwards. 



The water revenges the encroachment by flooding the land 

 wherever it finds a chance, and undermining when it cannot over- 

 flow, till it is impossible to say where the one begins and the other 

 ends. One walks almost dry-shod across what had seemed a dan- 

 gerous pool, and the next moment sinks over one's fishing stock- 

 ings in what anywhere else would have been dry land. The con- 

 fusion of ideas as to the relative solidity of earth and water which 

 results from an hour or two spent in exploring a soft "broad" 

 marsh is not lessened as one sees the huge brown sail of a 

 " wherry " — the craft which is said to go closer to the wind than 

 any other afloat — moving straight up to one, to pass by at eight 

 or nine miles an hour, sailing to all appearances on dry ground. 

 The navigable channels are most of them natural cuttings in the 

 dead level of the marsh, invisible at a very few yards' distance. 



The name of the long pole, which is one of the most important 

 parts of the equipment of the Norfolk wherry, the " quant," is, by 

 the bye. a memorial of the davs of Roman occupation. It was 

 with a quant, spelt a little differently in Virgil's day, that Serges- 

 tus, in the immortal boat race, tried to shove off his galley when 

 he had cut his corner too finely and run aground ; and with a 

 quant that Charon ferried his passengers across the Styx: — 



" Ipse ratem conto subigit velisque ministrat." 



The entire district is unlike anything else in England, and, 

 apart from its power of recalling the past, has an exceptional in- 

 terest of its own for naturtilists It is the paradise of shy crea- 

 tures of all sorts, birds especially, which love mud, or water, or 

 reeds; and has been the last settled English home of more than 

 one rare species. Their number, in spite of the keener interest 

 taken of late years by landowners in bird preservation, steadily 

 decreases. 



The avocet, with its spindle shanks, and beak turned up like a 

 shoemaker's awl, which not very long ago bred so freely in the 

 salt marshes that ''poor people made puddings and pancakes " 

 with their eggs, is now the rarest accidental visitor. The bittern, 

 comparatively lately a regular breeder there, no longer "guards 

 his nest" among the sedges and reeds; and ruffs and reeves are 

 as rare as they once were common. But there is — or at least till 

 last year was — one little bird, which, driven from every other 

 part of England, has made the broads his own peculiar property, 

 and himself thoroughly at home there. Hardy and modest in his 

 wants, the bearded tit has been essentially a home-staying bird. 

 His ancestors seem to have elected, generations ago, that, what- 

 ever the advantages of a winter in Algeria the disadvantages 

 were greater, and that, on the whole, it was better to face the 

 evils that they knew than fly to others that they knew not of. 



The " developments " of the family ever since the decision was 

 made have been in a direction to fit them for a quiet life among 

 the reed-beds. Other birds, smaller even than they, whose fore- 

 fathers were of a different opinion, have wings now so perfected 

 that, when soft animal food fails in England, they think nothing 

 of a flight of a few hundred miles to a sunnier spot where fat in- 

 sects may still be found. 



The bearded tit, with his little round wings and the heavy can- 

 vas of his long tail, cannot do what they can. But he can do 

 what they cannot, and make the most of what is to be got in the 

 way of food at home. In the swampy grounds from which bis 

 reed beds grow are quantities of very small snails. Some early 

 ancestor, feeling the pinch of hunger, ventured experimentally to 

 pick one up and eat it, and finding out the sustaraing qualities of 

 the rich inside meat, brought up his young ones to eat them too, 

 and make light of the aches which a sharp-edged, hard shell 

 swallowed whole must have caused in a delicately-coated stom- 

 ach. 



They, in their turn, brought up their young on the same Spar- 

 tan svstem, and now — unlike other tits, which have most, if not 

 all. of them tender insides, suitable enough for digesting soft in- 

 sects, but unfit to do justice to anything harder than a seed well 

 steeped in gastric juice - the bearded tit finds himself the posses- 

 sor of an honest, study gizzard, which can grind up, without the 



least inconvenience to the owner, any number of the shells of the 

 snails which are its chief delicacy. As many as twenty little 

 snail-shells have been taken from the crop of one bearded tit. 



We wonder now why good people should have been so much 

 alarmed as once they were at the doctrines of "development." 

 It is the teaching of the Parable of the Talents extended from the 

 spiritual to the physical world, — powers neglected or abused 

 wilhdrawn, others well used increased. 



The shape and color of the bearded tit are as specially a'lapted 

 as is its stomach to the peculiarities of its surroundings Visitors 

 to the broads in midsummer who may have caught glimpses of 

 the bird, showing itself for a minute or two at a time, a conspicu- 

 ous object against the green of the young rushes, may find it dif- 

 ficult to realize that the bearded tit is, when invisibility is of most 

 importance to it, protected by color and form scarcely less per- 

 fectly for all practical purposes than are leaf-insects, or stick- 

 caterpillars, or the wonderful creatures described by Professor 

 Drummond in his " Tropical Africa." But such is the case. The 

 eggs are laid about the middle or end of April, when the tall reeds, 

 among which the nest is built an inch or two from the ground, 

 are ripe for cutting 



The prevailing tints of the entire district — land, water, and sky 

 — are then the cinnamons, straw-colors, and pale blue greys, mi- 

 raculously reproduced in the feathers of the bird, which might 

 pass for the emancipated spi''it of the dead reeds of last summer. 

 The long tail, with its pointed end, hangs down as its owner 

 comes in sight for a moment to look about him, the countiTfeit 

 presentment of a faded frond of the stalk he grips, one foot above 

 the other 



The hoopoes, as the legend goes, wear their crown of feathers 

 in memory of the day when their ancestors saw King Solomon 

 almost fainting under a sudden burst of noonday sunshine, and 

 sheltered his royal head with a parasol of overlapping wings. It 

 may be as a mark of approval of the manliness with which he 

 faces winter on the broads, when snipe and other birds have been 

 driven off by the rold, that the bearded tit now wears the long 

 silky black moustache — his own peculiar adornment — which 

 hangs from each side of the beak. As in the nobler species, the 

 moustache is noticed only in the males. There is a prolon .nation 

 of the cheek feathers of the female also, but not the same con- 

 trast of colors. 



For all ordinary winters the bearded tit is amply provided. 

 But, unhappily, last winter — the longest on record since the days 

 of Lorna Doone — was not an ordinary one. Fifty-nine days of 

 consecutive, almost sunless frost were recorded in London, and 

 in parts of the broads the weather was even more severe The 

 snails for weeks and months must have been glued fast to the 

 ground or rush-stalks, — tantalizingly in sight for much of the 

 time, as there was no great quantity of snow, but as much oat of 

 reach of a small beak as flies m amber. The birds when most in 

 need of a warming meat-diet W' re driven to depend almost en- 

 tirely on such dry ship-biscuits as the seeds of reeds, without even 

 water, except here and there in the running streams, to wash it 

 down, and have suffered terribly in consequence. 



It was on one of the bright mornings towards the end of April 

 last, when, in spite of a wind still nailed in the east, a warm sun, 

 and such spring sounds as the call of the nut-hatch, — a pair of 

 whom had from daybreak been carrying on a lively conversation 

 over an unfinished nest in a box in the garden, — encouraged the 

 hope that the return of the glacial epoch might not after ail be so 

 near as for the last six months had seemed probable, we found 

 ourselves, after an early breakfast and drive of fourteen miles, 

 landing from a boat on the edge of a marsh skirting a broad. The 

 marsh is strictly preserved, and on it, as lately as last summer, 

 bearded tits were plentiful. We had come in the full expectation 

 of seeing both birds and nests, and were, if anything, rather en- 

 couraged than otherwise when the keeper — in the pessimistic 

 tone common to men of his order when conscious that there is an 

 unusually good head of game in front of the guns — told us that, 

 though there was a nice lot of reeds uncut, he "doubted" we i-hould 

 not find any tits, as to the best of his belief there was not one of 

 them left in the place. 



But before an enjoyable day was over his words had acquired a 



