666 
MR. F. BALFOUR BROWNE ON A 
contained within lines drawn from Happisburgh to Norwich, and 
from Norwich to Lowestoft, thus including part of Suffolk, and 
Mr. Robert Gurney in his paper upon the Crustacea of the Norfolk 
Broads has dealt with the district as thus defined. But for such 
an extended piece of work as that I am submitting to you — a scheme 
which involves the recording of at least the prominent groups of 
the fauna and flora, and in fact of as much of the whole system 
of life as possible — I think a somewhat smaller district will, at 
any rate at first, be more convenient, and I therefore propose to limit 
the investigation to a district including only those Broads connected 
with the rivers Bure, Ant and Thurne. This is all within con- 
venient reach of the Sutton Broad Laboratory and some part of it 
at least is not far from Norwich. 
For our purpose I propose to divide this district into twenty-four 
sub-districts, purely as a matter of convenience and without any 
reference whatever to faunistic or physical characteristics. This 
partitioning off of the ground is, in my opinion, all the more 
necessary, as I believe the Broads themselves are not the richest 
parts of our district faunistically, the dykes through the marshes 
and, for flying forms, the marshes themselves being more fully 
stocked. I think therefore that in describing the locality of 
capture of any species it is sufficient to name the sub-district. 
By adopting this method, the fauna and flora can be tabulated in 
twenty-four columns, one column representing each sub-district, 
and the distribution of any species can be seen at a glance, and, 
I believe with sufficient accuracy for our immediate purpose. 
Besides this tabulation of the distribution, we shall require 
records of the time of appearance and duration of the various forms 
and of relative abundance, and any other noticeable facts. One 
species of a genus may be dominant in one locality, whereas 
another species of the same genus may be dominant in another. 
Such a case actually occurs among the Dragon-flies, but I will refer 
to this again when dealing with the distribution of these insects. 
Now, though I have arbitrarily divided the district into twenty- 
four sub-districts, I do not think that it is either necessary or 
possible to work all these thoroughly. I do not hope, of course, to 
exhaust the fauna and flora of any sub-district; that would 
require a large staff of workers devoting their whole time to the 
work ; but I want to get at least the more prominent groups 
