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season to have nests at South Walsham. The mention of Surling- 
liam led to the remark that within the last few years ho had 
revisited that broad and was amazed at the small amount of water 
now visible, as compared with his recollection of the locality 
(dating back as far as 1819), showing the rapid growth of the peat 
and gradual closing up of the channels by the subsidence and con- 
solidation of decaying vegetation. His appointment as an hono- 
rary member of this Society, very shortly after its formation, was 
referred to with warm expressions of gratification that his former 
efforts, in a like cause, should have been so acknowledged ; and it 
was pleasant to witness the gratification which my announcement 
afforded him, that many counties in England as well as parts of 
Scotland could now boast of local “lists” and works descriptive of 
local faunas, following in this respect the example of Norfolk, and 
carrying to a successful issue the idea conveyed in the following 
passage in the preface to his book : — “ It is from notes made by 
different observers in various districts as to the frequency or 
scarcity of species in the counties in which they reside, that the 
master naturalist must build up his system for a nation.” 
This ended our first and last interview. On the 20th of 
August, 1870, he wrote pleading the infirmities of age for not 
having sooner acknowledged my announcement of the appearance, 
in the previous January, of a fine male Bustard at Hock wold, and 
presenting me with an adult specimen of Baillon’s Crake, shot by 
himself in the parish of Eanworth about five and twenty years 
ago. But iu renewing his invitation for me to visit him once more 
at Eccles, he adds, with that prescience of impending dissolution 
so usual in advanced age, “ if you can, come soon, I say soon, or 
you may not find me here.” Too true, indeed, for that letter was 
the last he ever wrote ! Many unavoidable engagements, unhap- 
pily, delayed my wished for journey, and scarcely three months 
later I received the announcement of his death, which took place 
on the 25th of November, in his 79th year, leaving a widow and 
six children, two sons and four daughters. He was spared, how- 
ever, an impending bereavement, his eldest married daughter 
surviving her father only a few months. 
Thus, full of years, beloved and respected, in his rural home, 
after thirty-nine years’ residence in the same parish, died the rector 
of Eccles — but as the pebble dropped into the quiet pool, sends 
