THH WRETHAM MERES. 147 
price of wheat would go up; but would fall with the fall of water 
in the pool. This was a chance for some symbolic interpretation, 
which was ignored by the author of ‘ Peeps at the Past, —a matter 
for wonderment. The mere was quite dryin 1859; at other times 
its waters have overflown the road; and in the swampy tract on 
the far side of the highway belated travellers have seen the fitful 
flickering of the will-o’-the-wisp. Seven parishes have the right 
of watering their sheep at this mere for so many hours a day, on 
so many days a week, the parishes differing in this respect to 
avoid any friction between the rival shepherds. Kiulverstone, 
Croxton, Hast and West Wretham, Bridgham, Roudham, and 
_ Brettenham are the villages so privileged. 
We have walked or cycled the four miles that le between 
Ringmere and the town of Thetford by night and by day at all 
seasons of the year, and have learned to love its changing moods. 
Being fed by springs arising from the chalk, the height of water 
seems to have no connection with the meteorological conditions 
prevalent for some time previous. ‘Thus in the middle of a dry 
season the meres are often full, and almost devoid of water 
after a long spell of rainy weather; when one mere is high, 
another may be low; and it would probably take a long series of 
observations ere the reasons for this could be assigned with 
any degree of accuracy. At certain periods of the year the water's 
edge is lined with thousands upon thousands of the empty shells 
of the freshwater Whelk (Limnea stagnalis), which crackle and 
erunch beneath the feet of the visitor as he walks round the mere. 
The people of Norfolk, with a contempt bred of familiarity, speak 
of these meres as “ pits,” referring to “ Ringmer Pit,” “‘ Langmer 
Pit,’ and so on. On a day in late September of last year, on a 
visit to Ringmere, I counted the bald patches of fifty-eight Coots ; 
and one flock containing twenty-five Mallard flew off to Langmere. 
Otherwise there was never a sign of life to be seen. The sun 
peered down between the lichen-covered trunks into the planta- 
tion glades with flickering shafts of light, that seemed fearful of 
disturbing something. Rushes and sedge swayed in the slight 
breeze; whilst on the lone hawthorn bush on the verge of the . 
crater mouth a Chafiinch uttered its melancholy “spink, spink, 
spink.” For had not his wife gone south for the winter, like other 
fashionable folk, and a state of ‘“‘ single blessedness”’ did not suit 
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