His central home is in the marshes of Russia and
Prussia; his food the mollusks which swarm among the reed-beds where
he builds; and feeding on those from reed-bed to reed bed, all across
what was once the German Ocean, has come the beautiful little bird
with long tail, orange tawny plumage, and black moustache, which
might have been seen forty years ago in hundreds on ever reed-rond of
the Fen.
One more proof--for it is the heaping up of facts, each minute by
itself, which issues often in a sound and great result. In draining
Wretham Mere, in Norfolk, not so very far from the Fens, in the year
1856 there were found embedded in the peat moss (which is not the
Scotch and Western Sphagnum palustre, but an altogether different
moss, Hypnum fluitans), remains of an ancient lake-dwelling,
supported on piles. A dwelling like those which have lately
attracted so much notice in the lakes of Switzerland: like those
which the Dyaks make about the ports and rivers of Borneo; dwellings
invented, it seems to me, to enable the inhabitants to escape not
wild beasts only, but malaria and night frosts; and, perched above
the cold and poisonous fogs, to sleep, if not high and dry, at least
high and healthy.
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