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These great marshes and reed-beds are full of interest to naturalists. The Fens of Lincolnshire and the Norfolk Broads show the way in which water plants keep hold of the worn and travelled rubbish of the hills, and prevent most of it from becoming useless, barren sea-sands. These places, however, like the sudd of the Nile, and the Roman "Campagna," have an evil reputation so far as climate is concerned. This used to be the case even in lower Chelsea, in London (where snipe were shot not so very long ago). It is as if Nature had desired to do her own work in peace and without being disturbed, for fever, ague, mosquitoes, and malaria are very common. Yet a certain number of people always live in such places. In France, e.g., the leeches in the great marshes near the Landes form a source of riches. Such reeds also are or were the home of the hippopotamus, crocodile, and other extraordinary animals. The extinct British hippopotamus no doubt found in the Chelsea or other marshes a home as congenial to its tastes as is the sudd of Egypt to its living descendants or allies. In other places the enormous quantities of water birds, myriads of ducks, geese, swans, regiments of flamingoes, snipe, and the like, have called into existence peculiar kinds of industry in fowling and netting that are not without importance. The decoys in the Fens yield hundreds of birds for the London market, and the duck-punts with their huge guns also bring in quantities of wild fowl.