466 
LEAVES FROM AN OLD DIARY. 
August 9th. “ Whilst in the garden last night about 8 o’clock, 
I heard a sound in the air which was continued, & which seem’d 
to me like the buzz of Bees which had swarmed. The night was 
extremely calm & serene, I looked around but saw no Bees, at 
length looking up, I perceived a prodigious N° of Books high in 
the air, which were moving home to the Park at Hunstanton for 
the night, as they moved along their flight seem’d to be with 
labour as if fatigued with the exertion of the past day, & the beat of 
their wings against the air which was slow and gradual, resembled 
the beat of oars of expert Seamen who kept an equable slow time 
together.” 
This record of what was probably an early migratory arrival, one 
of those “rushes” with which we have become so familiar on the 
east coast, is the last entry in the Diary which concerns us as 
naturalists, there are various notes and rough pencil sketches of 
fonts, windows, armorial bearings, &c., in different parts of the 
County with which I doubt not, our archaeological confreres are 
well acquainted, but here the regular entries cease. I must plead 
guilty to having been very discursive, perhaps unnecessarily so, in 
my endeavour to breathe life into the brief notes which the diary 
contains; but I trust my remarks may have rendered the somewhat 
dry bones of the entries not only more intelligible, but also may 
have in some degree developed the interest which their brevity and 
the lapse of time may have somewhat obscured. 
