423 
lad out fisliing, nearly opposite the Ilectory. lie thought it was an 
Otter, and pursued it in his boat till it took refuge in an open ditch, 
where ho struck it witli his spread * and killed it. It was only 
2 feet G inches long, so I imagine it was very young. There are no 
locks ill the water-course from the sea at Lynn, forty miles off to 
the staunch or lock at the end of the glebe in this parish. On 
the 3rd December another Seal was seen at Earith Brid^'e b 
making its way back to the sea on the ebb, the river at the time 
falling rapidly. A few years ago, an old lighterman of Earith 
caught a seal, ivliich became very tame, and would answer to his 
call and come out of the river to bo fed ; after some months, 
however, it met with the usual fate of pots. Every year enormous 
Eels follow the Smelts to our staunch, and two or three years ago 
we had a very large Sturgeon sporting about in the staunch pool.”— 
J. H. Guhney. 
Additional note on the nesting of the Buff (see p. 277). 
It aiijicars that the opinion o.xpressed in my Address, that a few 
pairs of Buffs and Beeves still nest in i^orfolk, is incorrect, for 
fiom impiiries I have since made, it seems they are extinct The}' 
M'crc breeding on our broads, when Mr. E. Booth, whose notes upon 
the species arc very interesting (from observations made in this 
county), published a catalogue of the birds in his museum (1S76) ; 
and ^Ir. Thomas Southwell, and the Bev. A. II. Evans, who has 
kindly sent me some notes, speak to a nest two years later, from 
which the young safely hatched off. Although this is so, my 
remarks as to the preservation of our rare indigenous species’ may 
not be inapplicable, as it is possible, with protection, they may go 
back to their old breeding-places as the Short-eared Owl has done. 
At present they arc a spring migrant, and may be still seen in 
flocks at the cud of April At this time, says Mr. Booth 
(Ic. p. U2), “ they are seen, or rather used to be, in flocks of from 
ten or twenty, to five or six times that number. On two or three 
occasions, in Xorfolk, I have been able to crawl within a few yards 
of one of these large bodies, and have had a first-mte opportunitv 
for observing their pugnacious habits.” This spring a flock of 
* A fenman’s pole for leaping ditches and for “quanting” a boat or wherry 
sanm^paS. Bluntishani, and forming part of the 
