president’s address. 
66i 
in the process. The Ringed Snake does not occur here. 
Some years ago a Tortoise was thrown out of a Ruston 
Marsh ditch by a man who was bottom-fying, or dyke 
drawing, and on July 23rd, 1906, Miss Green of Bclaugh 
caught a Water Tortoise at Wroxham. I had one brought 
to me from Potter Heigham a few years previously, but 
discovered, subsequently, that it had made its first 
acquaintance with Norfolk on a Yarmouth hawker’s barrow ! 
Mr. Balfour Browne writes of one (see our Trans, vol. vii. 
p. 754) as found at Ludham on Feb. 19th. 1904. 
1 here is a local idea that thirty years ago no Moles were to 
be met with on the common. In 1887 an ancient inhabitant 
drew my attention to numerous grass-covered hillocks on 
the South Fen, and asked me what they were. Old Mole 
heaps, I suggested, whereupon he said that he had never seen 
the work of one on the common. They are frequent enough 
now. on the drier parts, and the generally received idea is 
that they came with and by the railway ! The truth probably 
being that, in former days they were well and regularly killed 
down in the parish. 
When the lower parts of the common are first flooded by 
autumnal rains, many Glow-worm larvae are washed out. 
In October and November, 1889, I found hundreds thus 
stranded at high-water mark, but I have never hereabouts 
happened with a really bright female in the perfect stage. 
The large Water Beetle (Dytiscus marginalis) may frequently 
be found, and the Brimstone Butterfly is a common spring 
insect, though its food plant — Buckthorn — does not actually 
grow in the parish. The regular mowing and feeding of the 
common are not conducive to the seeding of the larger 
umbelliferae, hence we have no really local specimens of the 
Swallow- tailed Butterfly. 
A smattering of botany is an aid to comfort if not to success 
in Snipe shooting, as a knowledge of the habits, or rather 
habitats, of the more frequent marsh plants will often save 
x x 2 
