300 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
boundary upon the North Denes, has been all but exterminated, 
and the sand-dunes levelled for golfing and building purposes. 
To the west of the town les a great alluvial level, once the 
bed of the Garienis Ostium. Dyked and drained, this large area 
forms most valuable marshland, affording pasturage for many 
herds of cattle. The famous Broads are remains of this fine 
estuary. Breydon, another portion of it, five miles long and one 
in width, at the juncture of the Yare, Waveney, and Bure, 
remains a creat salt-water tidal basin ; its northern point reaches 
the town quays. ‘By the improved banking of the rivers” a 
large tract that was once under water has been reclaimed, and 
the drainage and cultivation following have, in the course of 
years, produced great changes in the natural productions of the 
district. The country a few miles northward becomes more 
hilly and wooded, as it does southward of Breydon. There is, 
however, nothing deserving of the name of a wood, except at 
Fritton, within the ten mile radius included in this paper. 
Very pithily and concisely the Pagets (referring to the various 
classes of the local fauna) remark :—‘‘In none of them have the 
changes described as taken place, in consequence of cultivation, 
been so much felt as in the Mammalia, nearly all of which, with 
the exception of the few species which it is a matter of profit to 
preserve, are either totally exterminated, or in rapid progress 
towards being so.’ ‘To the few exceptions referred to may be 
added such as from their amazing fecundity, and the gradual 
extirpation of their natural enemies, are becoming a pest and a 
scourge to cultivation itself; the Field Vole and the Brown Rat 
are instances in proof. And so long as the lesser birds of prey 
and the Weasel family are so incessantly persecuted, will this evil 
continue and increase. 
Lubbock* makes mention of a species of Dog—the black 
curly-coated Retriever—as ‘‘ very common here, though not 
entirely peculiar to the county—the Yarmouth Water-Dog, as 
they are generally termed in other parts of England.” The 
sagacity of this species is referred to in the case of one kept 
many years ago at a drainage mill adjoining Breydon. It 
regularly searched the flint-stone “walls” in winter for wounded 
wildfowl, which usually seek some nook or cranny. ‘ When the 
* Fauna of Norfolk,’ p. 4 in 1845 edition. 
