president’s address. 
533 
Marshall, in his ‘Rural Economy of Norfolk ’* speaking of this 
great level, significantly remarks that it is “tolerable in summer,” 
and then relates his experience of a visit which lie paid on the 
17th June, 1782. Entering the marshes at llalvergate, he says, 
that for nearly the first mile they rode to their horses’ knees in 
water ! They then inspected a marsh mill, of which Faden’s map 
shows only thirteen in the whole level (these doubtless altogether 
not equal in efficiency to one of the powerful steam mills which 
have supplanted them), and making a sweep towards the middle of 
the marsh, they returned to Wickhampton, where he states the 
entrance to the marsh was always free from water. This great 
expanse of marsh was, perhaps, the finest Snipe-ground in England, 
as many as seventy or eighty couple are there said to have fallen to one 
gun in a single day, and it formed the breeding-place of thousands 
of Ruffs and who can tell what other birds, for there is little 
known of it and its inhabitants in those days, when only the shep- 
herds and sportsmen ever trod its splashy soil. Although perfectly 
treeless, this great plain was not one dead level, there were 
sufficient irregularities to render certain portions drier than others, 
and these “ hills,” as they were called by the marshmen, formed the 
nesting-places of the Ruffs, Redshanks, Snipes, and other marsh- 
loving species which frequented them in summer in large numbers, 
whilst on the wooded highlands to the north, along which the old 
Yarmouth road runs, the Herons had their homes, and at Acle and 
Mautby were celebrated Duck Decoys now no longer worked, and 
earlier still the Cormorants nested at Reedham. 
IIow changed is all this in the present day ! From Acle to 
Yarmouth an excellent road runs straight across the marshes, whilst 
a railroad takes much the same course, and a second line of 
railway follows very nearly the same route as the old river side 
track I spoke of earlier. Large sums are expended annually on 
drainage, and all through the summer, and often far into the 
autumn, the flat rich marshes are dotted over with cattle and sheep 
innumerable, luxuriating in the rich herbage. 
* Edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 27*i. 
