president’s address. 
651 
As to the Chief Products of the Common. 
Ruston has long been celebrated for its fast trotting 
Donkeys. Spending its youthful years in the constant 
company of Horses, whose speed it meanwhile strives to 
emulate, is generally supposed to improve a Donkey’s paces. 
Parishioner Nockells once told me that he had frequently 
driven his impatient Ass to Norwich — over twenty miles 
that is — within two hours, and that without carrying either 
whip or stick. He and a friend driving a pair of Donkeys 
often passed the Yarmouth coach, which running from 
Sutton, used to be driven on alternate days by a woman. 
To drive a Pony in place of a Donkey was formerly looked 
upon as a sure and certain sign of a commoner’s increasing 
prosperity. The number of local Donkeys has certainly 
decreased within the past twenty years, but as neither 
Ponies, Horses, or Cows have concurrently multiplied, it 
must be left as an open question whether the parishioners of 
Ruston are better or worse off than their forefathers. 
As the Eastern origin of the species might lead us to expect, 
Ruston Donkeys restrict themselves entirely to the high and 
dry parts of the common, seeking food and shelter from the 
close cropped though luxuriant furze bushes. I hey are as 
careful as Cats about needlessly wetting their feet ; but one 
would have thought that after having been born and bred 
for very many generations in such close proximity to water, 
the local representatives would long ago have disinherited 
themselves from all such antique racial antipathies ; but 
only last year I heard of a Dickey driver, who, on his way 
home from work in a neighbouring parish, was obliged to 
unyoke and drag cart and animal through a big puddle on 
a tempest-flooded road. The predilection of these hardy 
animals for thistles is proverbial, their liking for Mares’ 
tails ( Equisetum ) I have not seen alluded to in print. In 
S pite of living Donkeys being such common objects of the 
