532 
president’s address. 
subject to inundation at high tides, and in 1853 I conversed with 
an old marshman on the spot, who assured me he had, “ years ago,’ 
gathered their eggs in abundance. The late Mr. Stevenson and 
Mr. Dowell have also had similar first-hand evidence, and 
“Clinker’s” eggs seem, in the season, to have formed the staple 
ingredient of the puddings and pancakes of the poor of Salthouse. 
The egg of this bird, figured by Hewitson in his first edition, was 
from Norfolk, and possibly from this locality. The Avocet became 
extinct here as the result of persecution, and not from enclosure 
or drainage; it probably last nested at Salthouse, about the year 1825, 
and the marshes were not embanked till 1851. For many years 
stray examples visited their former home, but there is no evidence 
of their having succeeded in nesting there. 
Fain would I linger over Horsey and its treasures, to which 
I have briefly alluded in the introduction to the second edition of 
Lubbock’s ‘Fauna of Norfolk’; to the Waxharn Marshes and 
their ancient decoy ; and to Breydon Water, which has so enriched 
the catalogue of Norfolk Birds, but I fear I have already departed 
too much from my original design, and must hasten to bring to 
a close this rambling and often irrelevant sketch, by a brief 
description of the magnificent stretch of marshes, of which the 
river Yare forms the southern boundary, as it pursues its sluggish 
course, for a distance of nine or ten miles between Reedham 
and Yarmouth. This great alluvial plain, comprising some 
14,000 acres, forms roughly a triangle, of which the ridge of 
high land, running north for six miles from Reedham to Acle 
Bridge, constitutes the base, and the two sides are represented 
by the courses of the rivers Bure and Yare, each for a distance 
of about seven miles in a straight line, converging at Yarmouth, 
and enclosing a tract of country shown on Faden’s line map, 
surveyed in the years 1790 — 94, with but a single marsh-road 
winding along near its centre, from Halvergate to a point 
about half way between Reedham and Yarmouth, where it joins 
a similar track which follows the river bank from the former 
place ; their joint course is then continued along the north banks 
of Breydon to the town of Yarmouth. 
