The part played by the digging of peat in the origin of the Norfolk Broads has been shown elsewher to be fundamental. The strat graphical studies of J. . Jennings and J. M. Lambert provide conclusive evidence that the basins on the Broads cannot be the result of natural processes and have been excavated in those parts of the east Norfolk valleys in which deep brushwood peats were easily accessible below surface reed peats. The evidence is set out at length in the Royal Geographical Society's Research Memoir No. 3 and need not here be recapitulated (Lambert et al., 1960). The historical evidence confirms the results reached by stratigraphical means and also makes it possible to identify with some precision the period during which the basins ofthe Broads were flooded and the turf industry, so flourishing in the thirteenth century, came to an end. The interpretations of the terse entries of surviving account rolls suggested, however, that this was no sudden catastrophe, but a long and complex process of decline in which a rising sea level and occasional flooding as a result of severe storms, accentuated the difficulties which were arising from changing economic and social circumstances. The entries in the account rolls of Martham, Hemsby and Bartonbury Hall manor in the parish of Barton Turf were particularly valuable in charting the course of turf production, but they also suggested that there had been changes in the methods by which the turf was produced from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. These changes involved the dredging of turf, presumably from the floors and sides of flooded turf pits, and the use of a long-handled implement equipped with a wire net and known as a didle. It was argued that the turf was loaded into barges or punts and then carried or 'ferried' to the firm banks where turves were moulded or cut for subsequent stacking and drying (Lambert et al., 1960, pp. 97-9). Similar methods of turf production, which can be described in some detail, in the Netherlands have been brought to the author's attention by Mr. J. Daams who has most kindly commented on the results of his own unpublished researches into the turf industry in the neighbourhood of the R. Vecht, near Hilversum, and has also provided a number of references and details of the turf industry. Perhaps because the Dutch industry was more productive and more highly organized than that of Norfolk, and also because it has survived much longer as an important activity, details of produc? tion methods exist for which no comparable Norfolk evidence can be found. Never? theless, the analogy with Norfolk is interesting and may also be instructive in the light ofthe deductions reached in the R.G.S. Memoir No. 3. In Holland taxes were levied on peat production and on its export (Diepeveen, 1950, p. 183). Records of consignment funds have provided systematic evidence of production. (Consignment funds are payments made in return for consent to exploit turf.) The payments were invested in bonds and the interest used to pay taxes, and to pay costs for the main? tenance of dykes or for the eventual reclamation of the land when turf production ceased (J. Daams, unpublished information). Concern about the devastation caused by peat-digging also called forth protests and edicts which provide information about the industry. The Court of Holland, for example, issued edicts concerned with limiting turf production in 1545 and on eight subsequent occasions during the course of the next fifty years (Diepeveen, 1950, p. 182). In the sixteenth century turf was being exported from Holland to Flanders, Brabant and Zeeland and even to England. It was being widely used in industries such as brewing, baking and salt manufacture