years. Little thinks the Scotsman, whirled down by the Great
Northern Railway from Peterborough to Huntingdon, what a grand place,
even twenty years ago, was that Holme and Whittlesea, which is now
but a black, unsightly, steaming flat, from which the meres and reed-
beds of the old world are gone, while the corn and roots of the new
world have not as yet taken their place.

But grand enough it was, that black ugly place, when backed by
Caistor Hanglands and Holme Wood, and the patches of the primaeval
forest; while dark-green alders, and pale-green reeds, stretched for
miles round the broad lagoon, where the coot clanked, and the bittern
boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song,
mocked the notes of all the birds around; while high overhead hung,
motionless, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond
kite, as far as eye could see. Far off, upon the silver mere, would
rise a puff of smoke from a punt, invisible from its flatness and its
white paint. Then down the wind came the boom of the great
stanchion-gun; and after that sound another sound, louder as it
neared; a cry as of all the bells of Cambridge, and all the hounds of
Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skein of terrified
wild-fowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air
with the hoarse rattle of their wings, while clear above all sounded
the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of the great
wild swan.

They are all gone now. No longer do the ruffs trample the sedge into
a hard floor in their fighting-rings, while the sober reeves stand
round, admiring the tournament of their lovers, gay with ears and
tippets, no two of them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves,
spoonbills, bitterns, avosets; the very snipe, one hears, disdains to