40 
]iam houses. In that same summer of 1 859, Langmere was quite dry, 
and Foulmere consisted oidy of a small pond at the further end of 
the basin, and on all other portions was a flourishing crop of wheat, 
oats, and vetches, when visited by Mr. Itinger and his farm 
steward ; the vetches not doing well were mown, and cow-cabbages 
sown in their place. This was the first occasion that either of my 
informants had known such an event witliin their time ; but each 
assured me that their fathers had often spoken of a tradition that 
Foulmere was once dry, and that a crop of oats then grown upon it was 
lost by the sudden influx of the waters, too rapidly for any portion 
of the grain to be cut or carried. In the hot summer, of 
1868, the waters were very low in all the three Meres, but never 
dry. I have more than once heard it asserted that these Meres 
have never covered so large an area since the late Mr. Birch, at the 
cost of several thousand pounds, drained his West Mere in 1851, 
and Great Mere in 1856; but if the above-mentioned tradition be 
true, and there seems no reason to doubt it, since the same thing 
occurred in 1859, it is evident these Meres have dried up from 
other causes than drainage, and long before Mi'. Birch’s explorations 
were ever thought of. In conclusion I may add, in evidence of 
the antiquity of these waters, that in West Mere, with about eight 
feet of mud, and in Great Mere, with not less than twenty feet in 
some places, Mr. Birch discovered hundreds of bones, consisting 
almost entirely of the Bed Deer (Cervm elephas) and the now 
extinct Bos longifrons but amongst these was a goat’s skull, and 
the skull of a boar or pig. A stiU more remarkable fact, however, 
was the discovery in that neighbourhood, for the first time in the 
British Islands, of the remains of comparatively recent specimens 
of the European Fresh-water Tortoise {Emij’s hitaria). All these 
bones, which, as before stated, were found under a great depth of 
mud, were associated with the remains of “ pile buildings,” re- 
sembling the ancient lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, and the 
water dwellings still used by the inhabitants of Borneo. In those 
pre-historic ages, then, we may presume that this vast heath 
district was inhabited by wild tribes, living on the products of the 
chase, and the finny spoils of their home waters. 
Did the Great Bustard then wander, in large “ droves,” over the 
yet unplanted waste, with tlie Ox and Red Deer of those early 
times, to descend, even to our own days, as the last representative of 
