Many parts of the fens abound with a remarkable species of _reeds_, which appear in summer, at some distance, like extensive fields of corn. In autumn, and at the approach of winter, they are resorted to by innumerable flocks of Starlings, which then subsist upon the seeds of those plants, and lodge or roost among their branches; from whence, when scared, they ascend sometimes in such vast numbers as to appear in the sky like a thick cloud, exhibiting a very strange and striking spectacle to those beholders who are unused to the curious phenomena of this singular country. The fen-fowlers, in their long boats, take these birds sometimes by surprize, when thickly assembled among those reeds, and with their long guns make prodigious havock among them. Myriads of them are so destroyed, and become a considerable article of food in the latter months of the year. The reeds to which these birds resort, and from whose seed, for many months, they derive a great part of their subsistence, are no less remarkable in another respect: vast quantities of them are cut down, or reaped like corn, in the latter part of summer; being afterward carefully dried and dressed, they are tied up in bundles or sheaves, made up into stacks or ricks, and sold for coverings of houses, making perhaps the best _thatch_ in the world. Great numbers of houses and barns, and even some churches are covered with them about the Fens and Marshland, and the adjoining parts of Norfolk. They are laid on very thick, curiously, and judiciously, and constitute a very durable, as well as neat covering, which is said to last sometimes thirty or forty years, with a little shaving and trimming. It has been observed of thatch coverings (those made of these reeds must be particularly so) that they make the coolest houses in summer, and the warmest in winter of all coverings whatever; being more impervious both to heat and cold than any other materials used for the same purpose. Thatching is executed in this country in a style of superior neatness, as well as firmness, and better calculated for durability, than the writer of this has known any where else except, perhaps, in the _Vale of Glamorgan_, where a similar method is used. The material there, indeed is wheat straw, and not reeds, which in that country cannot be obtained in any large quantity; but the process of dressing and preparing the materials, as well as the method of laying them on, seem to be there and here much alike. It seems somewhat remarkable that districts so widely separated, and which are in most other respects so very dissimilar, should yet in this particular bear so near and striking a resemblance to each other. {79a}