102 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



1893 two hundred of the latter were trapped in six weeks, and in 

 the following year one hundred in fourteen days. During the 

 past twenty years hundreds of acres have been planted with 

 trees, and the general appearance of the Warren has thus been 

 entirely altered. Most of the remaining portion is covered with 

 stunted herbage and lichen, and in summer by bracken, heather, 

 and short grass. 



Until this attempt at afforestation, even in a district remark- 

 able for its wildness — there are twenty large heaths within six 

 miles of Thetford — the Warren was pre-eminent. Plants, insects, 

 and birds whose usual habitat is the sea-coast are here found 

 inland, having probably survived from the time when a strait 

 divided Norfolk from the rest of East Anglia in the post-glacial 

 epoch. Two or three plants of the sand-dunes still grow plenti- 

 fully ; eight species of Lepidoptera usually confined to the 

 vicinity of the sea are more or less common ; and a small class 

 of moths is practically confined to this district, owing to their 

 caterpillars' food-plant being found only in the vicinity. Helix 

 virgata and other species usually considered littoral are found on 

 the same heaths and warrens. Thetford Warren is one of the 

 very few inland nesting-places of the Ringed Plover. Their 

 return in the spring is probably due to hereditary instinct trans- 

 mitted through countless generations. They were " very abun- 

 dant " at Thetford in 1836, but of late years the number of pairs 

 nesting in the locality has been extremely limited. A few Dun- 

 lins and Dotterel are observed on the Warren almost every year ; 

 Golden Plover have been seen at odd times; and it is one of the 

 last strongholds of the Stone Curlew. The first Stone Curlew 

 described to science was one killed in the neighbourhood of 

 Thetford in 1674, and forwarded to Ray by Sir Thomas Browne. 

 About Christmas, 1861, a Little Bustard was caught in a Rabbit- 

 trap on the Warren, and there is reason to believe that a nest 

 found here in 1832 was the last of the Great Bustards in Suffolk. 

 The Bustards were probably as numerous here as anywhere in 

 England, and it is unfortunate that those which Lord Iveagh 

 endeavoured to naturalize in the adjoining parish of Elveden 

 should have wandered in another direction, and not taken up 

 their abode on these wastes, where safety would have been prac- 

 tically assured. A somewhat similar attempt was made in 1885 



