170 THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF FLORDON COMMON. 
I. 
THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF FLORDON 
COMMON. 
By W. H. Burrell, F.L.S., and W. G. Clarke. 
Read 27th September, 1910. 
Chiefly owing to improved drainage, a large number of 
the “ wet commons ” of Norfolk have become appreciably 
drier within living memory, and though in some instances 
it is improbable that this process will be continuous, many 
things tend to make the wilder portions of the county less 
wild and inaccessible. Bearing this in mind we thought 
that a careful study of a particular common at all seasons 
of the year, while not without interest to present-day 
naturalists, might, in view of the changes mentioned, have 
a greater value for our successors as a record of a typical 
“ wet common ” early in the twentieth century. The 
common selected was that of Flordon, a village 7\ miles 
south by west of Norwich. In Domesday Book it was 
described as “ Florenduna,” and the suggested derivation of 
the name from the Anglo-Saxon “ flor,” a plain, and “ don,” 
a hill, suitably describes the situation of the village on 
a southern slope to the alluvium — some of which forms the 
common — by the side of a small brook which rises at Hethel, 
has a course of if mile before reaching the common, borders 
it (with one break) for over half a mile, and in a further 
two-thirds of a mile falls into the Tas after passing Flordon 
Mill. The common, which is in latitude 52 0 32' and longitude 
i° 13' E., lies west of the main part of the village and the 
church, on the north side of the brook, its narrowest part 
being 100 feet wide, and its widest part (bordering the road to 
Hapton) 1100 feet. The area of the common is 33 a. 1 r. 17 p., 
awarded under an Enclosure Act of which no local copy 
