Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/179

Rh price of wheat would go up; but would fall with the fall of water in the pool. This was a chance for some symbolic interpretation, which was ignored by the author of 'Peeps at the Past,'—a matter for wonderment. The mere was quite dry in 1859; at other times its waters have overflown the road; and in the swampy tract on the far side of the highway belated travellers have seen the fitful flickering of the will-o'-the-wisp. Seven parishes have the right of watering their sheep at this mere for so many hours a day, on so many days a week, the parishes differing in this respect to avoid any friction between the rival shepherds. Kilverstone, Croxton, East and West Wretham, Bridgham, Roudham, and Brettenham are the villages so privileged.

We have walked or cycled the four miles that lie between Ringmere and the town of Thetford by night and by day at all seasons of the year, and have learned to love its changing moods. Being fed by springs arising from the chalk, the height of water seems to have no connection with the meteorological conditions prevalent for some time previous. Thus in the middle of a dry season the meres are often full, and almost devoid of water after a long spell of rainy weather; when one mere is high, another may be low; and it would probably take a long series of observations ere the reasons for this could be assigned with any degree of accuracy. At certain periods of the year the water's edge is lined with thousands upon thousands of the empty shells of the freshwater Whelk (Limnæa stagnalis), which crackle and crunch beneath the feet of the visitor as he walks round the mere. The people of Norfolk, with a contempt bred of familiarity, speak of these meres as "pits," referring to "Ringmer Pit," "Langmer Pit," and so on. On a day in late September of last year, on a visit to Ringmere, I counted the bald patches of fifty-eight Coots; and one flock containing twenty-five Mallard flew off to Langmere. Otherwise there was never a sign of life to be seen. The sun peered down between the lichen-covered trunks into the plantation glades with flickering shafts of light, that seemed fearful of disturbing something. Bushes and sedge swayed in the slight breeze; whilst on the lone hawthorn bush on the verge of the crater mouth a Chaffinch uttered its melancholy "spink, spink, spink." For had not his wife gone south for the winter, like other fashionable folk, and a state of "single blessedness" did not suit