64b 
president’s address. 
There has never been any specified time for turning stock 
out on to or for taking them off the common : pasturage is 
free to all commoners throughout the year. Worstead Fair 
Day, May 12th, is the generally received day hereabouts for 
first leaving out at night such cattle as have been housed 
during the winter months. The only remaining vestige of 
allotments, or severals, occurs during the grass mowing. 
It then falls to the lot of the first man on the common after 
t 
the appointed time for commencement to select where he 
shall mow, and having made his choice, no one interferes 
with him. With respect to the hover cutting, Mr. J. T. 
Hotblack informs me that a man could dig peat for the year 
from as much ground as he could mark out with his spade 
without coming into contact with any other person who 
was meanwhile occupied in defining a similar zone for his 
own sphere of labour. 
The first record that I can find of the shooting on the 
common being let, was in 1853, when it fetched £2 2s. 6d. 
The average annual rent, up to 1870, was £3 5s. In 1875 
the Trustees resorted to public auction, the result being 
that the right of shooting from November 4th in that year to 
August 31st, 1876, was knocked down at North Walsham for 
no less than £25. The idea of fixing the last day of August 
for the termination of the tenancy being, to give the lessee 
the opportunity of making up a chance bad beginning of the 
season with a good ending. 
The publicity of public auction acted as a good advertise- 
ment, attracting further competition from afar, and in 1891 
we come to the record price of £54, which must be accounted 
for by the fact of the tenants of the adjacent game preserves 
at Horning and Crostwight thinking that many of their 
Pheasants fell to the share of the Ruston Snipe shooters. 
From that time, however, to the present season, the average 
annual rental has fallen to about £25. Since 1903 the 
expiration of the yearly tenancy has been changed from 
