NOTES FROM YARMOUTH. 
85 
hundred boats had rushed into that port I saw Plaice knocked 
down from £1 14s. to 18s. per trunk. Soles, which, on the 
nth had made from £ 12 to £13 per trunk, went for £3 8s. 
A “ trunk ” averages eight or nine stone. 
The air seemed alive with Curlews and Whimbrel on the 
night of August 24th. 
Herring-fry was remarkably scarce on local waters during 
the month of August. Breydon usually teems with the silvery 
little “ syle,” to the great delight of the Terns, which flock 
thither under normal conditions to feast upon it, and of the 
Gulls that gorge themselves with those left stranded among 
the Zoster a when the tide falls off the flats. The Terns were 
conspicuously absent during all the autumn ; only on the 
25th did any turn up, when quite 200 put in a transitory 
appearance. They were for a day or two mercilessly 
slaughtered. 
August 26th. Breydon covered with Whimbrel, Dunlins, 
Curlews, Terns, Gulls, Herons, &c. I saw several Green 
Sandpipers and Common Sandpipers. 
Gorleston Beach was strewn, near the tide mark, with many 
dead Lesser Weevers ( Trachinus vipera), and with hundreds of 
Little Squids ( Loligo rondeletti) cast aside from the drawnets. 
On ordinary occasions the beachmen are careful to heel these 
Weevers into the sand, well knowing the mischievous pro- 
perties of the black first dorsal fin-spines. On this occasion 
there were too many to trouble about ; and strangely enough 
visitors’ children who thronged the sands were playing with 
the dead fishes with impunity. 
I notice that Whimbrel and Curlews, when probing for 
food, often thrust their bills so far down that they mud their 
“ faces ” right up to their eyes. 
September 10th. Saw two Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) 
“ red ” coloured, in a cage at the home of a lightsman who 
had brought them from one of the neighbouring lightships. 
They had made the cage a wreck by wrenching out the wires 
with their strong mandibles. 
September 13th. Saw a Landrail ( Crex pratensis), which 
