president’s address. 
525 
The blowing sands of Thetford and Brandon were then, as now, 
tho strange nesting-place of the Ring Dotterel, one of our most 
common shore birds, and the Stone Curlew broke the silence of 
the night by its loud and musical whistle. In the singular Meres 
of Wrotham Heath, and in the waters of Stanford and Merton, 
various species of Ducks and Grebes found suitable nurseries for 
their broods, and the Black-headed Gulls which also found nesting- 
places in the same district, lent the charm of their presence. 
The great sheep-courses of Norfolk are thus referred to by Sir Henry 
Spelman, when speaking of the country about Methwold, Feltwell, 
&c., after stating that Methwold yields “ most excellent Rabbits,” 
he proceeds, “this part of the county is very excellent for feeding 
sheep, as is the rest of the west side. Most of the villages feed 
one, two, three, or sometimes four or five thousand ; so you may 
see that the nobles of England, when complaining of the tax 
imposed on ileoce, rightly affirmed that half the wealth of the 
kingdom consisted in its fleece.” 
Doubtless tho state of things which I have been endeavouring 
to describe, remained with very little alteration till the latter part 
of the last and the commencement of the present century, when, 
from various causes, many thousands of acres of land were rapidly 
brought into cultivation, which had previously been waste or 
common. Macaulay estimates that a fourth part of England was, 
in the course of little more than a century, “turned from a wild 
into a garden.” In tho fifty years preceding 1S22, the commons 
of three hundred parishes in this county, according to the ‘Norfolk 
Remembrancer,’ were enclosed, and the work had not then abated. 
The causes of this “land hunger” do not lie strictly within our 
province, but they are interesting to trace, and we have not far to 
seek for them. 
The difficulty of communication at this period was so great, that 
a plethora of corn might exist in one part of the country, whilst 
an absolute scarcity reigned in another ; the local wants were for 
the most part supplied by local production, and the “ loaf” was 
good or bad in accordance with the condition of the corn sent to 
the miller — there was no foreign admixture to improve the sample. 
VOL. v. 
N X 
