NOTES FROM GREAT YARMOUTH. 387 



shoulders and deliberately dived with him, not leaving hold of 

 him until both emerged in the shallow, where the old male 

 still sat nibbling the grasses. Evidently it was a necessary 

 lesson. 



At tea-time the youngster came forth from the burrow alone, 

 and in foraging discovered a bread-crust I had thrown out on the 

 grass above his burrow. He made a sorry climb up the clayey 

 incline, falling back into the water twice, landing therein 

 seemingly with some show of irritation ; on the third fall the 

 crust tumbled in with him. 



When passing a marine store warehouse in one of the 

 Yarmouth Eows early in June I heard the clamour of the hunt, and 

 naturally turned in to see the "fun." The hands were vigorously 

 turning over bales of old rope and heaps of bones, where- 

 among a number of Black Eats were in hiding. Two massive 

 bull terriers were in the thick of the melee with ivory-studded 

 jaws. The Eats had bred all too freely, and were much at 

 home in the byeways and bridle-paths among the stuff. It was 

 queer to observe odd fugitives that had escaped the dogs clamber- 

 ing along a gaspipe near the ceiling that led to another known 

 hiding place, but these, in every instance, were promptly knocked 

 down with a stick. The hunt accounted for some half-score of 

 old, young, and half-grown rodents, and two or three tattered 

 carcases were discovered later on in the day ; these had been 

 killed by the dogs unobserved. The Eats were typical Mus 

 rattus. 



July (?). — A great peculiarity attached to the Natterjack 

 (Bvfo calamita) or "Eunning" Toad is the fact that thousands 

 may be discovered in one village, whilst scarcely one may be met 

 with in the adjoining one. Early one Sunday morning I visited 

 a village lying south of the town expressly to see if I could 

 obtain a few specimens. The village referred to combines, with 

 its level of wet marsh and luxuriant weeds and rising sandy 

 common land covered with furze, to make just the most 

 favourable habitat of the species. The majority that had been 

 catching the unhappy Harpalus and other beetles, " sows " 

 (woodlice), and other small fry that haunt the strawberry beds, 

 were scrambling home to a sandy bank at the edge of my friend's 

 garden, where in the ragged sand and among the half-exposed 



