522 
president’s address. 
of quadrupeds and birds, were still common, .... the Badger 
made his dark and tortuous hole in the side of every hill, where 
the copsewood grew thick,” . . . the Wild Cat and Yellow-breasted 
Marten were still present, “Ben Eagles preyed on fish along the 
coast of Norfolk. On all the downs from the British Channel to 
Yorkshire, large Bustards strayed in troops, and the marshes of 
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered, during some months 
of the year, by immense crowds of Cranes. Some of these races 
the progress of cultivation has extirpated, of others the numbers 
are so much diminished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen, as 
at a Bengal Tiger or a Polar Bear.” 
Although even in 1085 it might still be said of some of its old 
resorts in this country, 
“There stalks the stately Crane, as tho’ he march’d in war,” 
still, I fear this fine bird must have been growing scarce in England 
at that time ; in other respects, the picture drawn by Macaulay is 
probably a fairly correct one, and would apply specially to the 
County of Norfolk, which was slow to change, and in which some 
species, for instance the Great Bustard, the Avocet, and the Ruff, 
lingered long after they had disappeared from other localities, and 
in fact, the latter bird can hardly even now be said to have quite 
deserted us in the breeding season. Of the extinction of the 
Bustard in Norfolk, and its attendant circumstances, through the 
researches mainly of Professor Newton and Mr. Stevenson, we 
possess a fairly full record ; but there are some other species'" which 
have vanished like a dream, we know not exactly how, nor precisely 
when, doubtless the event might have been predicted with tolerable 
certainty, but the observer was absent, and we simply woke up to 
the fact that their place knows them no more, and that is all. It is 
one of the objects of this Society to prevent a recurrence of so 
regrettable a circumstance. 
In times past, vast tracts of heath-land spread over the county 
stretching far away over hill and dale, remains of which are still 
* A remarkable instance of this is the Black Tern, which formerly bred 
in such vast numbers at Upton Broad, and other places. Vide 1 Birds of 
Norfolk,’ vol. iii. p. 314. 
