62 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



many vain attempts to keep out the sea by working 

 day and night, Sundays and weekdays, with re- 

 lays of men, the mouth of the harbour was at 

 length closed, and, the tide being forcibly kept out, 

 the harbour, partly by pumping and draining, 

 partly by evaporation, became gradually dry. A 

 great portion of it is now under cultivation, and 

 when the writer last visited this once "happy 

 hunting ground," he found many acres of roots 

 where he had often worked his punt, and put up a 

 hare on the former feedings g-rounds of the Wigreon 

 and Brent Goose. 



For the purposes of sport, therefore — and it may 

 be said for the purposes also of ornithological 

 observation — this fine harbour is now utterly and 

 irretrievably spoilt, affording another illustration of 

 the way in which the fauna and flora of a district 

 may, by man's interference and in the course of a 

 lifetime become wholly changed in its character, 

 and species become exterminated or driven away 

 by altering the conditions of life under which alone 

 their existence was possible. 



