48 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



MERE AND FEN. 

 The epithet of " fill-dyke," applied to the month of 

 February, carries us back to a time when the undrained 

 land lay sodden after the winter rains and every water- 

 course was filled to overflowing by the melting of the 

 snow. A chilly, damp, cheerless England of agues and 

 marsh-fevers it was, but not without its picturesque 

 features, of which the march of improvement has spared 

 us but scant trace in the fen-levels of Cambridgeshire 

 and in the Broad District of Norfolk. It is a land of 

 wide-stretching horizons, compared with which the 

 skies of hilly and mountainous districts seem strangely 

 circumscribed, and your true fenman* would not 

 exchange his quiet waters, in their gay setting of yellow 

 flags, arrowhead and flowering-rush, for the livelier 

 humours of North Country trout-stream or Highland 

 torrent. To drink in the spirit of the land, its wide 

 spaciousness and peaceful stillness, we must traverse 

 the vast marsh-pastures, fed over by numberless horses 

 and cattle, amongst which glide the brown sails of 

 boats which move on unseen waterways, or stand in the 

 midst of the one stretch of untamed fen still left to us, 

 whence the towers of Ely cathedral are seen vast and 

 dim to the northward. Elsewhere, only the pumping- 

 station — engine-house or wind-mill — with the straight 

 silver line of the " lode " or " level " into which it 

 pours its contribution of surface waters, shows how 

 much of the black land, now so firm and dry, and bearing 



