A HISTORY OF NORFOLK.*
Wouic of the best kind, clear and conscientious, is the mark of the first volume of the Norfolk series, which will be com- plete in five volumes, of the Victoria County History. It has. the same excellence of printing, paper, binding, maps, illus- trations, and general purpose as the first volume on Ramp- shire, and is equally interesting, with one exception not- due to the compilers. Mr. Round has been-unable to contri- bute an essay on or translation of the Norfolk Domesday. The- part of that unique record dealing with Norfolk is abnormally long. Far more serious is the corrupt state of the text„ and the obscurity of the abbreviations and formulas where the- text is sound. But it is surprising to find that its contents. are at present so imperfectly known that "the period is yet in the future when the Domesday of East Anglia will have- been fully explored." The order of the forerunning first volume (Hampshire) is followed. It is logical and effective. From Nature to man, and from prehistoric man to the close- of the pagan Anglian time, is the scheme of the book.
Neolithic man in Norfolk, Romanised Briton in Norfolk,. Teuton and heathen Angle in Norfolk, lastly the Dane in, Norfolk,—of these the volume allows us to see as much as in good for us and no more. In other words, the writers confine- themselves to facts and to certainties. Though careful and conscientious, they are not chill.. The rather empty and poor human life of a distant, and sparsely inhabited corner of a West Atlantic island, is presented (with all its makeshift 'discomfort) in nsufficieritly vivid way. Neolithic man comes out of the survey creditably. He turned the flint-bearing- , region near Brandon ..iritO a' kind of 'prehistoric) industrial district. There were, and still are, beds of the finest material for making the hardware of the day to be found anywhere in-,, the East. Another, and rather better, quality was found in. the West in the Blackdown Hills, and was as carefully worked. But probably they were too distant to be trade , rivals. "Greener Graves" is the modern name of the old Norfolk flint' workings. They are a number of old ,shafts, dubiequ.enfly filled-in with the material taken out. Neolithic:. man sunk his shafts 60 ft. in the chalk, and then followed the good flint vein like a modern Miner. 'These tunnels were ) found as they were left; the flints " won" Were in some cases , lying on the floors, and the men s tools and lamps in sib& The lamps were carved out . of chalk with flint chisels. The tools- or . picks were the brow antlers' of red-deer. Shay, were ,) found. The men had picked up shed, borne (mostly), cut off the tine except "the brow tine, and shortened the main stern to a handy length. The shape is exactly light for picking- r, - • The rikdoyie• History of As Colinties of, England.. "7_,NortqTk,- Vol. Edited by H. Arthur Doubbitliiy. Loudon:" Constable awl Co. C25s.)
out flints, and precisely what is used now at Brandon, only . the modern picks are wood and iron. There had been a fell" in one gallery, fortunately after the two men who were working it had finished the eight-hour day or whatever it was that Neolithic labour laws allowed. Their picks lay at the liead of the working, face to face, as if one were a right- banded and the other a left-banded man; and on the stag- horn handles was the dust left by their chalky hands! These men partly built, partly dug, creditable houses. The refer- .ences as to the remains should be consulted. There was no Roman "Norfolk," any more than there was a Roman Hamp- shire. But the organisation of the rather poor province of Britain extended to what is now the county of that name. 'The volume fairly proves that the " Icknield Way," which did not go into Norfolk, had nothing to do with the Iceni, and that the one at all considerable Roman town there was Caister near Norwich, which was probably "Yenta Icenorum." Caister near Yarmouth was a Roman fort built for a special purpose. Very considerable interest attaches to it, for in this connec- tion we come into the range of history and record. About a century before the legions left the declining Roman power tried to do something to protect what was already known as the "Saxon shore" of Britain, Saxon because those tribes were attacking it or nibbling at it, not because they lived there. The "French shore," as Mr. Haverfield pertinently says, is not the part of Newfoundland where the French live, but where they land and give trouble. To this end they created a Comes litoris Sazonici, the "Count of the Saxon Shore," and gave him what force they could spare to guard the coast from the Wash to Pevensey. Nine forts were built of various sizes from the Wash to Pevensey. Of these eight have been identified, and of these two were in Norfolk. One is Brancaster, and the other Caister near Yarmouth. Nothing more strikingly shows the weakness of the falling Colossus than these isolated, insignificant forts on the rim of the Eastern Coast, fifty miles apart, confronting the sea and its brood of savages ready to swarm across without warning from hyperborean shores.
When the Saxons, or rather Angles, did come, they seem to have been an uninteresting race, inferior even in their weapons to the Danes who attacked them later. But their custom of urn burial has obliterated nearly all records. Every deceased person was burnt with his belongings. The ashes were then put into an earthen jar. There are acres of these jars planted about in different parts of Norfolk, each obliterating the story of the dead. What is known for certain about these heathen Teutons is especially well told by Mr. Reginald Smith in the concluding chapter.
The notes on Norfolk birds and beasts, and the closing pages in which the gaps and doubts frankly admitted are referred to the universal practice of cremation and urn burial by the Teuton settlers, raise memories of the gentle and -curious Norwich physician. The book is Sir Thomas Browne brought up to date, with all the facts that Sir Thonlas would like to have collected, and many that he did collect or indicate as matter of suggestion and interesting conjecture.
We miss a good description of the surface appearance of Norfolk. A few pages of good descriptive landscape would be an addition. It is difficult for those unfamiliar with the county, and with the relation of soil and surface, locality and flowers, to picture it all. But for reference purposes the natural history of the volume leaves little to be desired. Professor H. B. Woodward, F.R.S., describes its geology ; Mr. Herbert Geldart, aided by Norfolk naturalists, deals with the botany; and the zoology is apportioned to very competent bands. The plan of combining the help ot county residents under the general direction of those in possession of expert knowledge on the subject works well. The local contributors often impart life and freshness by the very fact that their notes are local It is to be hoped that none of this may be sponged out by the supervising body, where space is available for its retention. Norfolk plants are ;float inteiesting. To know the reason, the reader should turn to Mr. Stevenson' introduction to the Birds of Norfolk, for there the natural -divisions and differences of the county are best set out, with the sharp distinction of fen, " breck," meal marshes, sand dunes, and enclosure. Norfolk botany has been well cata- logued for a centtuy. In that time only two species seem to have been lost, lialazia paludosa, because the small bop have
been drained, and Holosteum umbellatum, because the old walls in Norwich on which it grew have been pulled down. In the same way one or two rare plants in Hampshire are only found on the old walls of Southampton. We have no space to do more than note a few samples of the mine of interest in the botanical and zoological sections, which contain complete lists of all the flowers, ferns, mosses, insects, mollusca, marine zoology, fish, birds, and mammals. The salt marshes and the dunes have a peculiar vegetation of their own, a minute flora in the case of the latter, and such plants as the three sealavenders and sumda, which grows into bushes near Blakeney. The sea pea, Lathyrusmaritima, found on Orford Beach in Suffolk, does not grow on the analogous shingle bank of Cley. The inland " breck " country along the Cambridgeshire border, near Elveden, was once the edge of a post-glacial sea. Only two of the original coast plants remain, a grass and a sedge. But the ancient insect fauna remain unchanged. Very many coast species are found there in abundance, though these are known to be elsewhere only inhabitants of coast sandhills, and are now found on the present coast of Norfolk thirty miles away. The Broad district is still the main home of the swallow- tailed butterfly. The gypsy moth, to exterminate which the Forest Department of the United States is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, was once found in Norfolk, where it fed on a plant called .Afyrica gale. Since 1861 it has utterly disappeared from Norfolk, though its food plant abounds near Horning Broad. Bird protection has steadily increased the numbers of scarce birds in Norfolk. The spoonbill and bittern have not come back to nest, but there is reason to think that they may. Ninety-three spoonbills are believed to have visited Breydon Water in the twelve summers ending in 1898, and, thanks to the watcher of the local Bird Pro- tection Society, scarcely one has been shot. Among the mammals the black rat has been found surviving in con- siderable numbers at Yarmouth.
Mr. H. Arthur Doubleday edits this and the next volume. It should be added that the book is beautifully printed, and on good paper, but is so light that though a large quarto of three hundred and fifty-one pages, it can be held and read without fatigue.
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