A NORFOLK ESTUARY.*

MR. PATTERSON has already laid naturaliSts under an obliga- tion by his earlier books, Notes of an. East Coast Naturalist and Nature in Eastern, Norfolk In his new book he coufinee himself to Breydon, that fine tidal lake which lies west -.of Yarmouth and is so well known in summer to the yachts- men of the Broads. But Mr. Patterson, we have no doubt; is glad every year when the summer is over- fat least, the naturalist in him is -glad), when the noise of the amateur yachtsmen dies away, and the colder weather begins to bring in -sere and shy birds. • The old gunners may lament the days when Plancus was Consul, and a man could make a good living out of the wild ducks and geese that fell to his punt-gnu; but, take it for all in all, there are more birds now than ever for the bird-lover to watch. The kinds that breed in England have all greatly increased since protective laws have been more commonly applied. Of course the efficacy of the laws varies greatly; in some districts where laws exist the authorities have no funds to pay for the machinery to make them operative, andsin the better protected districts much depends upon the vigilance and devotion of the hired " watcher." The public do not • Wild Life on a No rfe: Mtuary. By Arthur IL Patterson. London: Nethufn Ina Co. (10s. 6d. net.) made rstand yet how much they owe to enthusiastic amateurs who oar. antee the wages of the watcher, without whom it would be to procure prosecutions of thoie who take eggs or aestri'nests in the breeding season. We spoke of the lumen- 'aitneof the old gunners, but we very much doubt whether tiele erence between "now" and " then" is so marked as ttki 1,iippose. Is it not a fact that every sportsman remem- berweat days so vividly that he allows them to stand for the isererage instead of for what they really were,—the exception ? linen'the large immigrations of wild-fowl only come, of 1- neinef, in prolonged hard weather, and probably the typical 1.41a Funner" of to-day has in his mind some of those severe

Wistere in the late " seventies " and early " eighties " of last .

*spar, when he himself was in his prime, and had both Ake .efp6rience and the power of endurance to profit by ;them. We have used the word " sportsman" of the punt-

itaniaers, although we do not forget that most of them are profiesionals who earn their hiring by their gunning. But akin worth while to say a word for a class who do not abwaye get credit enough for their skill and bird-lore. It is

may to speak of the punt-gun as simply a. means of "lilinghter," but those who use the word rarely understand

the amount of toil and patience that is necessary. If the taeli-breaking labours of the gunner (who must frequently work his punt along as he lies on his face), if his resolution to be piercing cold hour after hour, and if his painfully acquired sourcing be reckoned against the discomfort and risks accepted by all users of " hand-guns," it will be found that the punt- gunner has paid more dearly in physical effort than any of there for every bird he hags. Reading between the lines of

L. Patterson's book, we .see that, good ornithologist that ho ie, he remembers the professional gunner's title to respect. He himself has a. perfectly impartial judgment, as he has

given np shooting on principle. The birds have become too

truly his friends for him to take any pleasure in looking at tlieniiiown a gun-barrel. A pair of high-power glasses are hie orgy weapon.

Mr. Patterson spendS days at a time in his houseboat on Breydon. Here he lives the " simple life without .affecta- 14;ext, and for a most useful purpose. He is afraid that the kind behind Yarmouth may be transfigured some day by the encroachment of the sea. We cannot say whether his leave are exaggerated ; but it is safe at all events to lay it down rust all the low-lying parts of East Anglia are so anxious, as

it were, to return to their early state of inundation that they

ought never to be given any encouragement to do so. They are only held in a state of reclamation by constant effort.

Mr. Patterson says :— "We oftener get high tides and floods up-river now, for the wading of the Cliffs lying north of Yarmouth allows a sharper set-in of the North Sea currents, and, as I pointed out in a local paper, 'Our Commissioners aro playing a dangerous game in so eagerty (and constantly) deepening the Harbour mouth. To this lamest and others of mine, a well-known county man and an ardent angler replied :—' On the gale and high tide I beg to say I am eatirely of your opinion. The cupidity of your townsmen will in time swamp your now flourishing watering-place. The con- tinual deepening of Yarmouth Bar lets the tide run up with such a lark that any gale from the N.W., with the water low in the river, is bound to swamp everything. For the sake of increased harbour dues the place will in time be wiped out. Tho salt water eases sp the river now so far with every N.W. wind that fishing (angling) in the lower reaches, as at Cantley and at Reedham, is now quite a failure. . . The pressure of a huge influx of water found out *weak place in the walls at the Berney Arms end of Breydon, on December 23rd, 1894. A heavy north-west gale had been blowing all the previous day, and two flood-tides, without an ebb between them—i.e. one tide following in the wake of the other, thero having been no intermediate fall—piled up Breydon four or tiVe feet above the level of the marshes behind. The water filtered through a weak spot that had been overlooked by the tenant of the marshes, whose business it was to watch eventualities, and be prepared against them ; an ever-increasing vsduine of water poured in, until a huge gap was torn, and hundreds of thousands of tons of salt water swept into the marshes, first filling tho ditches, and then flooding, ninny acres before the tido began to fall again. But before another tide could add to tho inundation, steps had been made to remedy the breach, and the pump-mills were set going night and day, flinging the water back again."

The following passage from a. description of Breydon on a winter day will convey to the reader Mr. Patterson's manner

and spirit :—

" On- the 28th I went for a walk round, crossing the North Dens, sometimes wading through deep snowdrifts, now tumbling into. them, and again progressing much after the fashion of a 'abort-legged spaniel getting through deep grass, for the undulations and sudden breaks of the sand-dunes were hardly traceable ; and I finally reached the shore. Fortunately I felt in fairly-geed form. A few out-flying Turdida and finches passed over me as'I floundered through the snow ; but when I reached the beach, I found thrushes, fieldfares, redwings (in particular), larks, linnets, pipits, twites, and, indeed, incessores of all kinds, even including goldfinches, flying due south, following the coast-line; silently, like the brown ghosts of birds, they flew—hour after hour— thousands upon thousands! I wondered whence they were troop- ing and whether, but for stress, they would have still set at defiance the promptings that impelled many of their relations, two months ago, on their migration southwards. Surely these were they who had landed in Scotland and would have stayed there! Bunches of five, ton, twenty, and fifty straggled and struggled along, odd birds, fagged right out, alighting now and then to rest awhile. They passed almost within arm's length, many of them. I could have caught them with a landing net; and their lino of flight lay between the sea- licked edge of the snowy plain and low-water mark, over a ribbon of clear sand some fifteen yards in width. The silent hosts opened on either side of me as might a regiment of infantry., as I walked north ; they did the same as I came back homewards, slightly closing their formation again as they proceeded ahead' of ' me. Unfortunately the morning was gloomy, and my trusty Zeiss glasses a little too powerful for their nearness, so that had the smaller hosts contained rarities, they would have passed on unidentified. I longed to have my smaller operas,' but no gun,;, for I abominate that spirit which leads to the slaughter of hosts of small migrants for the sake of (reputedly) adding a new speoies to a county's fauna. I would rather spend half my -life among the mudflats and not know that some rare and new species of wader was watching me daily, than know and name it, if it meant my taking away the life it is as much entitled to as I a to mine! Here the ichthyologist, however sentimental, scores; for all rare and most common fishes are caught more or less by accident ! He may sit all day, for years, angling from a rocic, seeking in vain a Raligtes capriscus, and to-morrow it may be east, up on the shore by the scornful sea! Sun claque voluptas ! "

The present writer has had a duplication of that very experience. The redwing seems to be more delicate than any of the birds with which it associates in migrations. „ like an exhausted traveller in a snowstorm, who is said to have

no desire but to lie down in peace and sleep. It is probably .a kindness sometimes to chase a fagged redwing along . the ground ; it is just possible thus to prevent the fatal lethargy or stiffness from overtaking it. Mr. Patterson reproduces several conversations with Breydon gunners, but he hardly does it with the appositeness which was the secret, of the remarkable readableness of similar sketches by Mr. Cornish. Yet that does not matter much, for all that Mr. Patterson tells us is the pure gold of first-hand observation. The reader should look at the "fish notes" and "mammalian

notes " at the end of the book.