EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
EAELY AIMLS
OF OEMTHOLOGY
BY
J. H. GURNEY, F.Z.S.
Author of "The Gannet : a Bird with a History," "A Catalogue of
the Birds of Prey, Accipitres and Striges," etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND OLD PRINTS
H. F. & G. WITHEIIBY
326 HIGH HOLBORN, LONDON
1921
QL
jN^qo^G
PRINTED IN Gfl^AT BRITAIN.
PREFACE.
The idea with which this little volume originated was to
collect all the ancient passages about birds, of any special
interest, but more particularly those which concerned British
Birds, and to string them together in order of date. The
preparation of such a book has naturally led to considerable
research into the realms of literature, and here I should have
been in difficulty but for the help of such good friends as
Mr. J. E. Harting, Professor Edward Bensly and Dr. Eagle
Clarke. Especially do I hold myself indebted to Mr. Harting
for most valuable criticisms, and scarcely less so to Colonel
Willoughby Verner, Mr. W. H. Mullens, Mr. A. H. Evans
and Dr. Jenkinson.
J.H.G.
Keswick Hall, Norfolk.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. — Prehistoric Birds
II.— Fourth to Ninth Centuries
III. — Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
IV.— Twelfth Century
V. — Thirteenth Century
VI. — Fourteenth Century
VII.— Fifteenth Century
VIII. — Sixteenth Century (1st part)
IX. — Sixteenth Century (2nd part)
X. — Sixteenth Century (3rd part)
XL — The Crane, Bustard, Spoonbill and Bittern
XII. — Seventeenth Century (1st part)
XIII. — Seventeenth Century (2nd part)
XIV. — Eighteenth Century
Index
page
1
14
25
40
48
61
73
91
116
151
164
184
206
226
237
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Flamingos and Wild Ducks
Porphyrio and Flamingo
Red-breasted Geese from Meidoum
Statuette of a Domestic Fowl
England in the Ninth Century (Map) . .
Saxon Falconry
Ladies Hawking. (After Strutt)
Cranes in Ireland
Gannet Rock, Lundy Island
Harrowing, c. a.d. 1340. (Loutrell Psalter)
Marking the Beak and Feet of a Swan . .
Sketch Map (Bass Rock)
Sketch Map (Lundy Island)
James the First of Scotland (Portrait) . .
Marshlands drained by the Great Bedford Level
The Gannet
The Bird Rocks, Canada
The Bass Rock (Ordnance Survey)
The Bass, West Side from the Sea
Swan Marks (Heads)
Swan Marks
England and Wales (Map)
Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk
Turner's Tablet
Solan Goose (" Historia Animalium ") . .
Former Nesting Haunts of the Spoonbill
Plot's Gulls
Solan Goose (After Clusius)
Lundy (Symbolical Representation)
Sir Thomas Browne to Dr. Merrett (Facsimile)
Middleton Hall, 1918
Tablet to Francis Willughby
The Home of John Ray . .
John Ray . .
Map of Ray's Third Itinerary
" The Gannet "
face
face p.
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY.
Chapter I.
PREHISTORIC BIRDS.
Later Stone Age: Prehistoric Drawings. First Observers of Migration.
Superficial Deposits.
Bird Remains of the Later Stone Age. — In commencing with
the remains of birds attributable to the Stone Age, it must be
stated that there is no intention of attempting to investigate
the voluminous history of that subject in the present volume,
it is one for which the writer is far from being competent, and
moreover it is a branch of science which has been repeatedly
handled by those who have specialised in research of this
kind, and given the world their discoveries, Avhich are acces-
sible to all. Certain it is that there are few species of birds
now living in Europe, be they of the Order Steganopodes or any
other family, of whose Miocene progenitors anything conclusive
can be said, still less can the birds of our era be connected
with that earlier period which is known to geologists as the
Eocene, but as we approach a more modern epoch, remains of
birds become much less rare. Many there are which are assign-
able to the Stone Age, and especially to the Later Stone Age, a
period comparatively recent, when the prehistoric Briton had
begun to round off his roughly chipped stone axes and polish
them with sand. It is to this period, terminating in Britain
about two thousand years B.C., that the remains of Solan Geese,
and other birds discovered in a sea-cave in Durham, belong ;
also some fragments of Solan Geese which were found in 1913
(together with bones of the Great Auk, Razorbill, Guillemot,
Cormorant, Shag, Swan, Wild Goose, Merganser, Gull, Tern,
and Water-Rail) by Mr. Ludovic Mann in the Asilian or
Mesolithic shell-mounds of Oronsay, an island on the west
coast of Scotland.
These mounds, in Mr. Mann's opinion, represent the oldest
known inhabited sites in North Britain, and their age is
B
2 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
probably to be computed by tens of thousands of years. But
the bones found in them are not necessarily all of equal
antiquity. " There is no doubt," writes Mr. Mann, " that
at the time these mounds were inhabited the topography of
Britain was somewhat different from what it is at present.
The land was sunk some twenty-five to thirty feet lower into
the sea, but the climate, so far as we can ascertain from
molluscan and from floral remains, was not materially different
from the present climatic position."*
In Denmark a number of Solan Goose bones have been
disinterred, and some in Norway, mixed with the bones of other
birds, all of which have been described by Dr. Herluf Winge.
These remains indicate that there may have been
Gannetries-j- on the Norwegian and Danish coasts, where also
for the same reason it is thought possible that the Great Auk
bred in the Stone Age.
Prehistoric Drawings of Birds. — Most remarkable are the
ancient representations of birds, which have been discovered
by Colonel Willoughby Verner and the Abbe H. Breuil in the
rock shelves and recesses of caves in southern Spain, where,
protected alike from wind and weather, they have lain unknown
yet preserved for thousands of years. These are of the Neo-
lithic Age, but the Abbe Breuil has been good enough to furnish
information of some caves which contain a few figures of birds
appertaining to the Palaeolithic epoch. These he has already
partly published, in conjunction with Sefior H. Alcalde del Rio
and Pere Lorenzo Sierra, under the title of " Les Cavernes de
la Region Cantrabrique, Espagne." At Gargas, in the Upper
Pyrenees, he is acquainted with a beautiful Palaeolithic
representation of a bird, perhaps a Crane or Heron ; and at
La Vilera de-El Arab, he knows of a Stork ; while other figures
of birds of similar antiquity have been found at Minateda in
Albacete.J These singular drawings are in all probability
* L. M.. in Hit.
\ In no English Dictionary is the word Gannetry to be found, yet there
is no rearon why it should not be considered English, as much as the commonly
employed terms Rookery, Heronry, and Gullery. They are all names having
the contracted suffix eyrie or aery, signifying a breeding-place of birds. To
spsak of a " Rookery " of Gannets, or a " Rookery " of Penguins seems very
inappropriate.
X See also Reinach's " Repertoire de l'art quaternaire," p. 23 et seq.
PREHISTORIC BIRDS 3
the oldest pictures of birds in the world, far exceeding any-
thing which has been found in Egypt, or among the sculptures
of Assyria. The most productive cave which has been
explored, and the only one in southern Spain where birds
have occurred, was that at the Tajo Segura, situated near the
Laguna de la Janda, in the province of Cadiz, which came
under Colonel Willoughby Verner's investigation in 1913-14.
The Abbe Breuil assumes as beyond question that the birds
depicted at the Tajo Segura are of Neolithic origin, in which
case they may be assigned an antiquity of six to eight thousand
years. I am greatly indebted to Colonel Verner for some
of the photographs, which were taken under difficult circum-
stances. In his interesting account of this cavern and
its drawings* Colonel Verner furnishes the following list of
recognisable outlines of twelve species of birds, viz., Great
Bustard, Crane, Wild Duck, Wild Goose, Raven, Spoonbill,
Flamingo, Purple Gallinule, Glossy Ibis, White Stork, Eagle
and Marsh Harrier, besides others which are doubtful. It is
true the drawings are very crude, but in some instances the
character of the bird or beast is caught in an unmistakable
manner. With Colonel Verner's permission three of the most
characteristic are here reproduced ; these give the Flamingo,
Duck and Purple Gallinule. It is to be observed that they
all represent birds that are to this day characteristic Spanish
species, which is an indication that the ornis of Spain has
undergone very little alteration in this great lapse of time.
Neolithic man was more advanced in many ways than we are
apt to suppose, and very cunning in the chase of beasts and
birds, whose habits, from continual watching, were well known
to him. " That Neolithic man," observes Colonel Verner in
one of his articles, " inhabiting this district was a keen
hunter, is proved by his numerous drawings of the beasts
of the chase, notably Red Deer and Ibex ; also by the repre-
sentations of men armed with bows in pursuit of the same.
All the animals thus shown as having formed his quarry in
ancient times exist to this day in southern Spain. It is the
same with the birds." This undoubtedly adds very much to
their interest in the eyes of a modern naturalist. In the
vicinity of the caves, or at no great distance, there are still
* "Country Life," July 28th, 1914.
p
Cy g
u
PREHISTORIC BIRDS 5
living, to quote Colonel Verner, hundreds of Great Bustards,
tens of thousands of Wild Geese and Water-fowl of all sorts,
besides Cranes, Storks, and a few Flamingos, also Vultures,
Eagles, and Harriers. The ancient inhabitants of the district
would therefore have presumably had no difficulty in obtaining
them for food. A considerable number of similar eave drawings
representing Deer, Ibex, Goats, Horses and Cattle, one of a
Bison, and some of Fish, had previously been discovered by
Colonel Verner and his indefatigable colleagues in the enormous
3
_J
PORPKYRIO.
FLAMINGO.
cavern of La Pileta in the Serrania of Ronda. Many, if not
most of these, are Palaeolithic, which gives them a vastly
greater antiquity than the birds. Some of the figures are
depicted in yellow, some in red and others in black, but the
first are the oldest. A few of the best are executed with
great fidelity, particularly one fine Wild Goat about eighteen
inches long, in black. Others are very imperfect and crude,
often the merest outline, but in nearly every case the animal
intended can be guessed at. In the opinion of Colonel Verner
and others who have studied the subject, the Spanish pictures
plainly indicate that Palaeolithic man, accustomed to the
6 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
incessant and intent watching of the birds and beasts upon
which he was dependent for food, has shown himself more
expert than those who came after him. It is a fact that in
knowledge of drawing and colour, when delineating objects
of the chase, he has proved to be more advanced than were
the men of the Later Stone Age, who many thousand years
afterwards left us their examples of Neolithic art.
Animals in the Bronze Age. — The next stage brought under
our notice is the Bronze Age. Hitherto the rude and uncul-
tured inhabitants of Great Britain had lived on the wild fruits
of the land, and on such fish and small game as they could
catch with the help of sticks and stones. While still possessing
little or no knowledge of metals, they had to contend with the
Wolf, the Wild Ox and the Stag, and also with the Bear and
the Eagle. But a great change was produced when they took
to fashioning tools, and most likely discovered the art of setting
snares for birds. As the Bronze period superseded the age of
stone implements, so was it itself superseded in due course,
though not until long after, by the use of iron, which prevailed
among the Romans, and gave still greater facilities for hunting
and bird-catching. It is hardly to be expected that skeletons
of birds eaten in the Bronze Age would be preserved, when
even the remains of much larger animals have proved unable
to resist the process of disintegration.
Ancient Records of Geese, Fowls and Pigeons. — Although
as regards antiquity the prehistoric figures of birds, which
have been discovered in the cave dwellings of the Neolithic
hunters, far exceed any other representations, the ancient
pictures of Egypt, and the bas-reliefs of Babylon must not
be overlooked. Crude as they are, they afford consider-
able testimony which can be of use to the naturalist, if only
because of their being the earliest evidences of bird-life
in that portion of the globe. One of the most significant of
these old paintings so far known, is an exceptionally lifelike
fresco representing six Red-breasted and White-fronted
Geese, to which attention was drawn by the present writer
in 1876.* This unique and beautiful relic was obtained
by the celebrated excavator, Mariette, from a tomb at
Meidoum in Egypt. The slab was assigned by Mariette
* " Naturalist in Egypt," p. 120.
PREHISTORIC BIRDS 7
to the fourth dynasty, but in any case it must date from
at least three thousand years before the Christian era. It
suffices to show that in these two species of Geese a space
of more than five thousand years has not been long enough
to create any alteration in plumage. There are many other
birds besides Geese among the paintings of Egypt, but very
few of equal merit and antiquity with this slab.
RED-BEEASTED GEESE FROM HEIDOUM.
The Fowl. — But old as is the painting from Meidoum,
there exist figures believed b}^ Messrs. Stubbs and Rowe to be
ascribable to the Domestic Fowl, which date further back still.
In a shrewd investigation of their age and identity, these
authors seek to demonstrate that the Fowl was kept and reared
by the inhabitants of ancient Egypt prior to 4400 B.C.* In
support of their contention, they cite especially two figures,
one a painting, the other a statuette, but as their cut of
the latter is not quite satisfactory, it is here more correctly
reproduced from the Proceedings of The Society of Biblical
Archaeology, t
* " Zoologist," 1912, p. 1.
t Vol. XXTT., p. 270.
8 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
If a breed of Fowls was to be had in Egypt, one would
expect it to be also existent in Syria, yet whether Fowls are
mentioned, or not, in the Old Testament, is a point not settled,
commentators being by no means agreed. The Hebrew word
barberim in 1 Kings iv. 23 is considered by most scholars
to mean " fatted fowl," and is so translated in both the
Authorised and Revised versions, but some have raised
arguments against that reading. It is worthy of notice that
the Domestic Fowl is among the few animals which have shown
themselves capable of living and multiplying in any and every
country, from the equator to the poles : so long have they been
under the yoke of man, that they have lost the need of any
STATUETTE OF A DOMESTIC FOWL.
particular climate, or soil. This makes it the more likely that
they were early introduced into both Syria and Egypt.
The Pigeon. — Tristram takes the view that the Pigeon, and
not the Fowl, is the earliest domesticated bird of which we have
any knowledge. In Egyptian records, Pigeons in a domestic
condition date back to the fifth dynasty, that is about 3000
B.C., indeed the art of training them as carriers of news was
known not a great while later.* No bird is more frequently
mentioned in the Old Testament. It was a Dove or Pigeon
that Noah chose to send out from the Ark, when the Raven
failed, and some early attempt at taming is indicated by
the fact of their being offered with domestic animals like the
Heifer and the Goat, in sacrifice. It was at least 2000 B.C.
when Abraham was bidden to present " a Turtle-dove and
a j 7 oung Pigeon," for those being very likely the kind of birds
* Wilkinson's " Ancient Egyptians," S.S. II., p. 215.
PREHISTORIC BIRDS 9
most ready to hand could most easily be offered with the she
Goat and the Ram.* Then we recall the reference in Isaiah,
" Who are these," exclaims the prophet, " that fly as a cloud,
and as the Doves to their windows ? " — arubbah — that is " dove-
cots ' (Is. lx. 8). If the translation is correct, they were a
domestic species, and dove-cots, or pigeon-houses are proved
to have been coeval with the Kings of Judah.
First Observers of the Migration of Birds. — There are many
theories as to the origin and subsequent development of
bird-migration, but whatever may have been the source from
which it sprang, it is clear that it was going on some thousands
of years before the Christian era. It was not likely that this
great biannual movement would be overlooked by the ancients,
and in fact we have several intimations of their having accu-
rately observed it. There were naturalists in those days as
there are now, although the records left behind them be but
few.
The first of these is the well-known passage in the Book
of Job, " Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her
wings towards the south ? "t
Next we have that graphic Bible story of the miracle of
the Quails in Sinai, told in two passages in the Pentateuch,
when the Israelites were saved from starvation by great flights
of these birds. On the first occasion, for they refer to different
dates — in fact, a year apart — the sacred narrative tells how
" it came to pass that at even the quails came up, and covered
the camp " (Exodus xvi. 13). The expression " at even " is
to be noticed, as characteristic of the habits of Quails, which
migrate by night, as do most birds.
Again we read in the Book of Numbers, that " There
went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the
sea " (Num. xi. 13). The appearance of an unusual number
of a migratory species is often to be connected with a high
wind, which in this instance Lane supposes to have been the
south-western Khamasin,% an idea supported by a reference
to it in the Psalms. §
* Genesis xv. 9.
f Job xxxix. 26.
J " Modern Egyptians," II., p. 222.
8 Psilm lxxviii. 26.
10 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Canon Tristram finds that according to calculation the
season was spring, and the month April,* in which^he is in
agreement with Clarke and other commentators. This is the
period when all avine migration runs strong, and with Quails
in particular, as I can testify. f
The Quails which came to save the Israelites from starva-
tion, therefore, were making their annual journey northwards,
only in very unusual numbers, and the sea from which they
came, or over which they had passed, was we conclude some
portion of the Red Sea.
To the prophet Jeremiah, when remonstrating with
backsliding Judah, the periodical return of birds must have
been known, or how could he have said, as he did, " The stork
in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle
[dove] and the crane and the swallow observe the time of
their coming. "J
Jeremiah, who is believed to have been born, and to have
lived, near the Dead Sea, had probably often watched troops
of Cranes and Storks passing overhead, as modern travellers
have done, in many parts of Palestine.
The above quotations from the Old Testament clearly
prove that some, at least, of the Scriptural writers were well
acquainted with the phenomenon of migration, nor were the
classical poets behind them. Passing over an incidental
comparison by Homer of the Trojans to Cranes fleeing
from the coming winter, § there was Hesiod, who lived in
the eighth century B.C. and like his great predecessor, knew
the Crane. He had probably often watched them, when on
passage high in the air, in Bceotia. To Hesiod their cries
sounded like a summons to the labourer to plough his land,
just as in other countries they have been looked on as the
heralds of spring.
Then there was the poet Herodorus {circa 525 B.C.), who
though not mentioning Cranes, guessed that the Hawks he
* "Natural History of the Bible," p. 231.
t April 3rd, 1875. Being at Silsilis on the Nile, the lentil fields were
found to be full of Quail, so that we could realise on a smaller scale the scene
in the Israelitish camp on those two memorable occasions. It was not easy
to recover such small birds in the luxuriance of the lentils, when killed, but
thirteen couple proved an acceptable addition to our fare.
% Jeremiah viii. 7.
§ " Iliad," Bk. III.
PREHISTORIC BIRDS 11
saw must have come from some distant land, because
they appeared suddenly. Some translators think he meant
Vultures, but nearly all birds of prey are migratory, so that
is immaterial.
The Swallow was pretty sure to appeal to the poets, and
in the fifth century b.c. Anacreon was ready enough to welcome
the return of this harbinger of spring. In lines which have
been rendered into English by Thomas Moore, he assigns
Memphis on the shores of the Nile as its winter retreat. As
might be expected, Herodotus, commonly called the " Father
of History " (b. 484 B.C.), has something to say about migration
which is also fairly definite. He tells us, as if it were an
admitted fact, that Cranes, when they fly from the rigours of
a Scythian winter, flock into Egypt to pass the cold season.
By Scythia he meant the country to the north of the Black
Sea ; farther north than that was to him a terra incognita*
Aristotle a Great Naturalist. — But the first to discuss
migration in anything like the spirit which moves a modern
naturalist was the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). He
knew that there were many birds which migrated north
in summer and south in winter, quitting countries which
would have afforded them an insufficiency of food after
the autumnal equinox. He also thought he knew that the
Crane migrated from the steppes of Scythia to the marsh-
lands south of Egypt, where the Nile has its source, i.e.,
Central Africa. To the Pelican he gave a much shorter range,
supposing that it merely shifted from the Strymon in
Bulgaria to the Ister River, i.e., the Danube. Aristotle,
although he may not have read Anacreon, was quite aware
that the Swallow went somewhere, and admits that no one
had seen a Turtle Dove in winter. He held that Pigeons and
Turtle Doves flocked together and migrated, as did the Swan
and the Wild Goose. As to Quails, if the wind was south,
it went hard with them in his judgment, but if it were in the
north they were bound to have a successful passage. His
observations, which contain much truth, must have been
partly made at Athens, and partly derived from travellers,
but some refer to Pontus in Asia Minor. Aristotle considered
* See Rennell's " Geographical System of HerodoUis " p 50 et seq.
12 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
that the Cuckoo went away about the time the Dog-Star
{Sirius) rose, that is in July, which is correct enough.*
Bones of Birds from Superficial Deposits. — Of no great
antiquity are the bones of birds which have been dug up in
peat bogs and other superficial deposits in different parts
of the British Isles, a list of which is given in the " Ibis "
for 1891 (pp. 383-394). Some of them are perhaps open to
question as regards their determination.
More than sixty years ago a Pelican's humerus was
exhumed in the Isle of Ely, although its identity was not
immediately recognised. f This and another of larger size
which I obtained through Mr. Baker, at Feltwell in Norfolk
in 1869, J were thought by Professor Newton to be assignable
to Pelecanus crispus, an opinion confirmed by the subsequent
discovery of a third specimen. § The first Pelican's humerus
was submitted by Professor Newton to Professor Milne-
Edwards, who agreed with him that it was that of a young
bird, in which ossification was incomplete, a strong indication
that it was bred in Cambridgeshire. A fourth Pelican's
bone was subsequently reported to Professor Newton from
Glastonbury, where later excavations have yielded quite a
large number of Pelican remains. These have been fully
described in the " Ibis " (1899, p. 351) by Mr. C. W. Andrews,
and in " The Glastonbury Lake Village " (Vol. II., p. 631).
Mr. Andrews finds that " Many of the bones are greatly broken
and the ends much abraded, and in several instances they
must have belonged to young birds. This latter circumstance
appears to indicate that these birds bred in the neighbourhood,
and that they were probably used for food by the inhabitants
of the Village." Pelican bones have also been recorded by
Dr. Herluf Winge from Danish kitchen-middens of the Stone
Age. The peat bogs of the Isle of Ely have further
yielded bones of the Bearer, Wild Swan, Wild Duck, Great
Crested Grebe, Bittern, and Coot. || That the Swan, like the
* Dr. Eagle Clarke attaches much importance to the writings of
Aristotle about Migration (" Studies in Bird Migration," Vol. I., pp. 3-5).
f "Proe. Zool. Soc," 1868, p. 2; "Ibis." 1868, p. 363.
\ " Proc. Zool. Soc," 1871, p. 703 ; Norwich Nat. Tr., VI., p. 363.
§ "Norwich Nat. Tr.." VII., p. 159.
(] " Ibis," 1868, p. 361.
PREHISTORIC BIRDS 13
Pelican, was a breeder, is most probable. Seven associated
bones attributed to Cygnus musicus were found at Southery in
Norfolk, and a tarsus referable to C. beivickii in Monmouth-
shire.* Bones of the Crane, being large, are not infrequently
preserved ; chief among the places where they have been dug
up are the fens of Cambridgeshire, and at King's Lynn in
Norfolk. These latter, from their condition, seemed to be
remains of no antiquity, see " Norwich Naturalists' Trans-
actions " (Vol. VII., p. 178). Other bones of the Crane have
been found in County Clare, where at the same time certain
remnants of the Greater Spotted Woodpecker and Hawfinch
were identified. j"
Cat. of Fossil Birds in Brit. Mus.," pp. 107, 108.
'Tr. R. Irish Acad.," XXXIII., B. pt. 1.
Chapter II.
FOURTH TO NINTH CENTURIES.
Fourth and Fijlli Centuries : Birds known to the Romans. — Sixth and Seventh
Centuries: Allusions to Birds in Saxon poetry. — Eighth and Ninth
Centuries : Birds known to the Later Saxons. Birds eaten by the Picts.
British Birds hioivn to the -Romans. ^Before dealing with
any one particular species, it will probably be both helpful
and convenient to take a general survey of British birds,
beginning, that nothing may be overlooked, with the earliest
times. By a survey is here meant an examination of all
such records and facts as are likely to throw any light on
ornithology in its broadest sense. It is hoped that some-
thing of utility may in this way be adduced, but the task is
not altogether an easy one, and can only be achieved" with
the help of a good library, and with the assistance of friends.
First, it will enable us to mark the gradual rise of
ornithology. For a while the study of natural history is
almost non-existent : then we begin to trace the pursuit of it
by a few. Having overcome the indifference of the Saxons
and passed the period of the Norman's ignorance so far as
relates to birds, in all matters apart from hawking, ornithology
at length begins to see light. Progress is very slow throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but in the sixteenth,
discovery in things of Nature at last is to be found approaching
the dignity of a science, and after that it rapidly develops.
Secondly, in taking this course, the endeavour has been
made, as far as possible, to piece together a sort of narra-
tive, less by grouping collected facts together, than by
adhering to a chronological arrangement. This certainly
seems the best mode of proceeding, for although it may
break up the connection of the story, and necessitate a few
rather unconnected paragraphs, it preserves the order of dates
in their sequence. There are practically no materials with
which to begin this narrative before the time of the Romans.
It is true that bird-remains, which were assigned to the Grey
FOURTH TO NINTH CENTURIES 15
Goose, Barnacle Goose, Duck, Crow, Jackdaw, Kestrel, Crane,
Capercaillie, Blackbird and Pigeon, were exhumed from a cave
dwelling in Somersetshire* considered to be late-Celtic, but
Roman coins were found as well.
Setting aside the Father of Natural History, that is,
Aristotle, we must begin with the labours of the celebrated
Pliny, who died a.d. 79, leaving to posterity a work of
encyclopaedic magnitude, and very discursive — the"Historia
Naturalis." " Pliny," writes Professor Newton, quoting from
his first translator, Holland, " relying wholly [in the case of
birds] on characters taken from the feet, limits himself to
three groups — without assigning names to them — those which
have hooked talons, as Hawks ; or round long claws, as
Hens ; or else they be broad, flat, and whole footed, as
Geese and all the sort in manner of water-fowl. "f
It is not to be expected that there should be any bird
in Pliny's Natural History answerable to the Solan Goose,
although he does name a species which appears to be the
Cormorant. J Nor is there much in that first century
work which has reference to England, or its Natural History,
except where, as Professor Bensly points out, Pliny makes
this observation, that " of the Goose kind there are Penelopes
and also Chenalopeces, the latter generally smaller than a
Goose ; and Britain knows no richer feast than these." The
" Chenalopeces " were possibly what we in England now call
the Sbeld-Duck.§
We therefore commence with the Roman occupation
of England, which lasted from 52 B.C. to a.d. 410, during
which time many permanent settlements were formed by
the conquerors. The excavations undertaken at the Roman
town of Calleva (now Silchester) in Hampshire, by Sir
William St. John Hope and his colleagues, have done much
and helped to reveal to us the then fauna of England. But,
previously to this, remains of the Horse, Stag, Fox, Boar,
Hare, Rabbit, Mouse, Cat, Polecat, Goat, Pig, Sheep, Duck,
Fowl, Rook, and some smaller birds had been disinterred
* " Archaeologia," 1911, p. 590.
f " Dictionary of Birds," Introduction, p. 3.
J Book I., ch. 69, and Book XI., ch. 41.
§ See Turner " Avium Praeeipuarum " (Evans's edn., p. 25).
16 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
by the exertions of an antiquary at a Roman villa in
Gloucestershire. *
From the settlement of Calleva, we are in possession
of sufficiently identified remains of the domestic fowl, the
Duck, Goose, Swan, Crane, Raven and Crow.f The Thrush,
Woodcock, Plover, Teal, Pheasant and Jay are also to be
included with some doubt.
" The most common birds' bones [at Silchester]," writes
Mr. H. Jones, " after those of the domestic fowl, have been
identified as those of the Raven. . . . The numerous bones
found amongst the Roman remains would almost point to its
having formerly lived there in a semi-domestic state. Con-
siderable remains of the Wild Swan, all apparently from one
bird, were recovered. The numerous bones of the domestic
fowl, especially the spurs of cocks, seem to show the presence
of at least two varieties. . . ."J
Again, in another place, it is stated : " The Raven and
the Crow, especially the former, seem to have been very
plentiful, and gave the largest number of identifiable bones. §
The abundance of the Raven is curious, but it may be
it was hung in a cage at the entrance, as the Magpie was in
Rome, to help keep guard against intruders or to salute those
who came invited to a villa. ||
The only other discovery was the leg bone of a Guinea
Fowl, if the identification be correct, encircled by a metal
ring, probably an imported pet to Silchester, for a knowledge
of which I am indebted to Mr. H. M. Wallis.
But Hampshire and Gloucester are not the only counties
where birds' bones have been found, for from Mr. James
Ritchie I learn that Haddington has yielded remains of the
Buzzard. To this species some bones from Roman debris at
Folkestone may also have belonged. If
With regard to other Roman birds we have surmises
in plenty, as well as sundry facts. An Eagle served as a
* " Antiquities of Biohborough," by C. Roach Smith, 1850, p. 109.
t " Archaeologia," 1892, p. 288 ; 1902, p. 20 ; 1905, p. 369 ; 1900, p. 167.
For these references I am indebted to Mr. J. Quinton.
} •■ Archaeologia," 1892, p. 288.
§ " Archaeologia," 1893, p. 573.
(] Fosbroke, " Encyclopaedia of Antiquities," L, p. 54.
«] "Archaeologia," XLVIL, pp. 450, 455.
FOURTH TO NINTH CENTURIES 17
standard to the Roman legions and they had Owls on their
coins. Unquestionably they had aviaries in England, -were
breeders of poultry, and kept more than one sort of fowl. It is
an open question whether they brought the Peacock, which
was not likely to have been introduced by the Saxons. That
they brought the Pheasant there can be little doubt, as
Professor Daw kins has long ago suggested.* Knowing their
fondness for Geese, we may assume that they tried domesti-
cating the Grey-lag Goose, which, being a resident in English
fens, was not hard to come by. According to Horace, the
liver of a white Goose fed upon figs was a dainty among
the Romans, and Ovid tells of their being kept in lieu of
house-dogs. Fosbroke,"}" the industrious antiquary, informs
us that flocks of Geese were driven to the markets at Rome,
even from Picardy and Flanders, — that Magpies were kept
in barbers' shops, — that Ostriches were made to fight with
gladiators, — that the Romans imported Parrots, but apparently
had only green ones, — that their epicures esteemed the tongue
of the Flamingo, and still more Thrushes which had grown fat
on figs (of which Italy can produce such abundant crops),
a circumstance borne out by their own poets. '" Obeso nil
melius turdo," says one of them, the practical Horace, when
enumerating the good things of the land. J Even in those
days white Blackbirds Avere not unknown and excited curiosity
in the towns, where they were sold for the aviary rather than
for eating. That the Romans had large aviaries cannot be
doubted, and plenty of domestic Fowls, both in England and
Italy ; indeed the method of fattening cocks by castration is
supposed to have been introduced by them. They sometimes
varied the bloody scenes of the amphitheatre by indulging
in cock fights, but, unlike the Greeks, they were not greatly
addicted to this form of sport, being more concerned with
Quails for combat. §
* " Ibis," I860, p. 358.
f " Encyclopedia of Antiquities and Elements of Archaeology," by
T. D. Fosbroke (1825).
t Lib. I., Ep. XV., line 40. It is an opinion shared by all Italians to the
present day, we the accounts of their Roccoii, given in the " History of
Fowling," by H. A. Macpherson (pp. 101-106).
§ " Archaeologia," 1786, p. 144.
18 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Turning to animals other than birds, we have the best-
proof that the Romans had the Fallow Deer in this country,
which they are credited with having introduced. They were
not great hunters by nature, but there is evidence of their
chasing the wild Red Deer with dogs. According to Caesar's
Commentaries there were Hares in England, but the natives
did not eat them, and they had the same prejudice about the
Cock and the Goose.* Both Romans and Britons were well
acquainted with the Wild Boar, which they chased and brought
to bay, but a Boar in his lair was a dangerous beast for a man
armed with nothing better than a sword and a spear. About
1740-48 there was found in a garden in Weardale, Durham,
a Roman altar of great significance of the hunter's peril in the
chase. It was dedicated to the God of the Forests in grati-
tude by one Tetius Veturius Micianus, a prefect of soldiers,
who had slain — maybe single-handed — a great Wild Boar
which had set all previous hunters at defiance. This singu-
lar relic is recorded by Dr. Taylor in " The Philosophical
Transactions, "t
The inscription, which is repeated by Mr. T. Birch in
the " Gentleman's Magazine" for 1749, J has been looked upon
as one of much importance and has attracted great attention.
This sculptured stone is generally referred to by archaeologists
as The Weardale Altar, see Harting " British Animals
Extinct within Historic Times " (p. 78), where an excellent
account of the Wild Boar is given.
Sixth and Seventh Centuries.
Inferences in Saxon Poetry to Birds. — It was not until
Anno Domini 571 that the Saxons came in force over the
North Sea, and one of their number assumed the title of
King. They had with them scribes and minstrels, no doubt
diligent in their office, whose duty it was to write poems,
perpetuating in some cases real history, in others acceptable
legends. It is from this source that we get very early mention
of British birds.
* "De Bell. Gall." (Lib. V., c. 12). " Archaeologia," 1792, p. 164.
f No. 486, p. 173.
* Vol. XIX., p. 449.
FOURTH TO NINTH CENTURIES 19
What must needs be the first mention "of the Solan Goose
is discoverable in the Anglo-Saxon poetry here referred to,
in what is known as the romance or poem of Beowulf.
Here the most noticeable bird of the ocean, the Gannet,
at once becomes emblematic, and the sea was figuratively
referred to as its bath. In this sense —
.... Manig otherne
godum gegrettan ofer ganotes ba?3
sceal hring-naca ofer hea-thu bringan
lac and luf-tacen. . .
(Translation): . . . Many a one shall greet the other with
benefits, over the Garmet's bath ; the ringed ship shall bring
over the deeps offerings and tokens of love.
It is difficult to fix the date of the writing of this poem,
which, thanks to the Early English Text Society, is accessible
in autotype, but it was subsequent and possibly long subse-
quent to a.d. 597. The margins of the MS. are unfortunately
sadly worn, and the word " ganotes " scarcely legible.
The next mention of the Gannet is to be found in
the celebrated " Codex Exoniensis " in an Anglo-Saxon song
" The Perils of The Seafarer," which will be quoted from Mr.
Benjamin Thorpe's translation : —
Translation.
" At times the swan's song
I made to me for pastime,
the ganet's cry,
and the ' hu-ilpe's ' note ;
for men's laughter,
the men singing ;
for mead-drinking,
storms there the stone-cliffs beat ;
there them the starling answer'd,
icy of wings.
Full oft the eagle scream'd,
dewy of wings.
So also the cuckoo exhorts*
with mournful voice."
* The Cuckoo also comes into " The Legend of Saint Guthlac ' (Bk. VI. j.
20 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
This is an exceedingly interesting passage, for it gives us
the names of four birds, all mentioned for the first time as
British. If the Huilpe could be identified, it would make
five : Professor W. Skcat considered it agreed that it was a
bird of some sort.*
Possibly it was the Whaup or Curlew, but what was
meant by the steam or Starling is obscure. It is hardly likely
to have been the bird which we call a Starling now.f
A third mention of the Gannet occurs in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, and a fourth in an Anglo-Saxon rune:
" Oak is on earth
to the sons of men
food of the flesh,
often he goeth
over the ganet's bath." J
In an A.S. metrical psalm there is a fifth allusion —
" fuglas comon of garseoge, ganetes fleogan " — " there came
birds of the ocean, Gannets flew."
The only other item which calls for quotation, is a vague
one, coming as before from the Saxon Chronicle : " a.d. 671.
This year happened that great destruction among the fowls "
— how, or from what cause, the writer does not tell us.
Here I may be pardoned for observing that the earliest
printed translation of the Saxon Chronicle was undertaken
by a member of my family — Anna Gurney, of Northrepps,
and completed in 1819.§
Eighth and Ninth Centuries.
Birds known to the Later Saxons. — Two hundred years
of residence in England could not be altogether without
* " Notes on English Etymology," 1907, p. 6.
| See Jilfric's Glossary in Somner's A.S. Dictionary. The Rev. F. C. R.
Jourdain thinks it was the Tern, a suggestion which has been before made.
The Saxon word in the orginal is Stcem, and that is very similar to Stam,
which is a provincialism still in use for Terns : Steer is given for a Starling
in Bosworth's A.S. Dictionary.
J " Archaeologia," 1840, p. 344, J. M. Kemble.
§ The collection of Teutonic and etymological books formed by this
learned lady is preserved in the Norfolk and Norwich Library : an obituary
of her by Mrs. Austin appeared in the " Gentleman's Magazine " for Septem-
ber 1857.
FOURTH TO NINTH CENTURIES
2]
effect on the civilisation of the Saxon population. It was
too early for a love of letters to manifest itself among a
ENUIAN D IN THE NINTH CENTURY.
people whose chief notion of right was brute force, but
ideas began to circulate, and learned thoughts to permeate ;
not many of these were committed to writing, but the
22 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Saxon Chronicle went on, continued by other hands. There
were plenty of domesticated animals. Food of all kinds,
flesh of swine especially, was plentiful, and those by the sea
could, in addition, maintain themselves by fishing. Already
had begun what was destined to be one of Britain's greatest
industries, the catching of herrings, as indicated by a reference
to it in 709 in the Chronicles of Evesham, an important
monastery (67 monks) in Worcestershire. This early Saxon
herring fishery, which showed enterprise in the population
not to have been expected at that date, must have developed
rapidly. We judge that it did so, from what it was at the
Conquest, see " Introduction to Domesday," by Sir H. Ellis.*
The names of four more birds are now to be met with
in the Saxon Chronicle : the Kite, Goshawk, Vulture (?) and
Raven. These are believed to be correctly identified ; indeed
the Raven would have been familiar to the invaders. It was
consecrated by the Scandinavians to the god Odin, and was
a bird always invested with superstition.
Earliest Annals of Falconry. — The only other facts about
Saxon birds, on which complete reliance can be placed, are to
be sought for in the early annals of Falconry, a sport which
may claim to be the first form of the chase known. Mr. J.
E. Harting, who has elucidated this subject with his usual
erudition, and written some charming chapters about it,
considers that the date of the introduction of Hawking into
England cannot now be ascertained. \ It must, however,
have been of Saxon origin, as the Romans have never been
suspected of introducing it when they came to Britain. That
it had been practised in some parts of Europe is certain,
and that the sport was already in vogue in France is also
known ; this much being proved, inter alia, by a singular
table of seventh century rates obtained from the Lex Ripuar
and Lex Alaman by Mr. John Whitaker, % among which we
* 1833, Vol. I., p. 141. Ellis indicates a great spread. In the eleventh
century Beetles near Yarmouth had to pay the abbey of St. Edmunds
thirty thousand herrings. In 1195 it had still further prospered, so much
so that the fishery at Dunwich in Suffolk, the greater part of which port
is now under the sea, was able to furnish Henry II. with twenty-tour
thousand herrings.
f " Essays on Sport and Natural History," 1883, pp. 67-68.
X Taken from that author's " History of Manchester," 1771 (Vol. II.,
p. 347).
s.
d.
3
12
6
3
3
and
iii
FOURTH TO NINTH CENTURIES 23
discover some of the prices for hawks, and in particular the
value set on a falcon of one year,
C. 37 Lex An untamed Hawk
Rip. A Hawk a year old
G. 84 L"x A Hawk that flies at Cranes
Alum. A Goshawk
A Crane
In Persia there was Hawking 1700 years ts.c.,
Ghina before that, and even in Europe Mr. Harting thinks that
it was practised three centuries before the Christian era,*
which shews the extraordinary antiquity of this sport.
Pennantf and Strutt — who devotes an elaborate chapter
to the early history of Hawking in Great Britain in his
"Sports and Pastimes of the People of England" (1801) —
would seem to be the first authors to relate the following,
which is somewhat differently told by Mr. Harting, and
the original of which is to be sought in " Epistola? Sancti
Bonifacii."J
About the middle of the eighth century (prior to 755)
Boniface, Archbishop of Mons in Belgium § himself a native of
England, presented to Ethelbert II., the Saxon King of Kent,
one Hawk and two Falcons, the latter probably Gyrfalcons.
A King of Mercia, which was a part of England farther north,
also requested the same Archbishop to send to him two
Falcons which had been trained to kill Cranes.
This is an early notice of the Crane, and here, no doubt,
the real Crane was meant. There must have been Cranes — for
which the Saxon name was Crcen or Comoch — on the marshes
of the west and north cf England, or Falcons would not have
been needed in Mercia to fly at them. The passage further
shows that to be an ecclesiastic was no bar to the enjoyment
of the pursuit of Hawking. But the Kings of Kent and Mercia
were not the only monarchs who took delight in Falconry,
as will appear presently. Their sports were imitated by that
* T.c, p. 08.
f " Arctic Zoology," 1784, by Thomas Pennant (Vol. II., p. 219).
{ Sen edn. Wiirdtwein, Ep. 8t, or edn. Duemmler (Mon. Hist. Germ.),
Ep. 106.
§ According to one account, Boniface, who was murdered in 752, was
Archbishop not of Mons, but of Mentz in Germany.
24 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
somewhat mysterious royalty of the ninth century, Alfred the
Great (a.d. 849-901).
King Alfred. — Alfred's gifts in respect of " falconarios,
accipitrarios, canicularios quoque," are alluded to in the
ancient chronicle of Florentius Wigorniensis. Alfred is even
supposed to have himself penned, or to have had written, a
treatise on the subject of Hawking, so great was his delight
in this occupation, a treatise which, did it now exist, would
take precedence of all that has been written in this country.
Birds eaten in Scotland by the Picts. — If the few Saxon
documents which survive afford us very little information
about Natural History, there is another way in which we
may glean something, and this is by the use of the spade.
Already in several cases the bones of birds, mostly large
ones, which have been used as food by early dwellers in the
land, showing little signs of decay, have been exhumed.
Especially has this been the case in Scotland, in the
vicinity of ancient earth-forts and dwellings, where the half-
eaten remains of animals were likely to be thrown away by
the Picts or Caledonians. These were the inhabitants of
North Britain a thousand years ago, and they have left their
marks behind them.
In the course of some excavations in an ancient earthwork
of this sort, in the Orkney Islands, assigned to the Picts, recog-
nisable remains of the Solan Goose, Cormorant, Shag, Great
Northern Diver, Whooper Swan, Gull, Manx Shearwater and
Great Auk were dug up.* But these are not the only remains of
the Solan Goose which have been disinterred, for in Caithness
similar bones were disco vered,f as well as in the North of Ireland, %
and in Ayrshire, § and in the kitchen-middens of Denmark.
Mr. James Ritchie has been good enough to inform me that
a large collection from Dunagoil Cave in Bute, a likely locality
for Solan Goose bones, being only thirty-five miles from Ailsa
Craig, contained none, nor were there any with the abundant
remains of the Shag in three caves examined in East Fife, in
which were also found remains of the Goose, Gull and Diver.
* N. F. Ticehurst, " British Birds," 1907-8, Vol. I, p. 309.
f In 1864. See " Prehistoric Remains of Caithness."
1 " Irish Naturalist," 1S99, p. 5.
§ '• Zoologist," 1915, p. 406.
Chapter III.
TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.
The Tenth Century: The Laws of Howel. Athelstan, King of the West
Saxons. Edward the Confessor. — Legends about Birds .; A Fowl of Value
A New Zealand Legend. The Barnacle Shell. The Raven. — The Eleventh
Century : Falconry, the Sport of the Normans. Domesday Book.
England in the Tenth Century. The Laies of Hoicel
relating to animals. — Much has been written about the manners
of the Middle Ages in England, but bird-life in the time of
the Anglo-Normans, for want of facts, never can be properly
described. We might expect the recital of their feasts to shed
some light upon it, and we do get a few brief items from the
chronicles of William of Malmesbury, while the later writings
of Holinshed and Speed, Camden, Joseph Strutt and Wright
describe the enormous quantity of provisions which were
consumed. But none of these writers relate all we should
like to know about the different kinds of birds which were eaten.
With the beasts of the forest it is rather different, for there
is more about hunting, ?nd various materials are to hand
which tell of the Wild Boars and Wolves which were only
too numerous for the welfare of the people. A good many
of these anecdotes and references are gathered together in
Harting's " British Animals Extinct within Historic Times "
(1880), and afford very suggestive reading, as well as valuable
matter for reference.
To the tenth century probably belong the Welsh laws of
Howel, King of Cambria, which have been translated by
William Probert. From these Ave learn that there were three
Common Hunts in Wales — namely, the hunting of a Stag, of
a swarm of Bees, and of a Salmon. There were also three
" barking hunts," so called because the game was " treed "
or brought to bay by dogs, viz., the hunting of the Bear, the
Squirrel, and the Pheasant ; and three Clamorous Hunts in
26 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
pursuit of the Fox, the Hare and the Roe-buck. These terms
are easily understood and imply that Bears, Squirrels and
Pheasants were in existence to be hunted. Howel also
alludes to Hawking, which must have been introduced by
the Saxons into the less mountainous parts of Wales. There
are, he says, three animals whose feet are of the same value
as their lives, that is to say, without them they would be
worthless — a Horse, a Hawk, and a Greyhound.
Athelstan mid Edward the Confessor. — When Athelstan,
the Saxon, defeated the King of Wales in 937, he imposed
upon him for tribute, among other things, the providing of
" birds trained to make prey of others in the air." This
is related in the " Gesta Regum Anglorum " of William of
Mahnesbury, who died in 1143.* No doubt these birds
which preyed on others were, as Mr. Harting supposes,
Hawks for hunting : the expression is very applicable.
The same historian sa}'s of Edward the Confessor, who
died in 1066, that his greatest enjoyment was in hounds, and
in " the pouncing of birds, whose nature it is to prey on their
kindred species. "f These " pouneing " birds must also have
been Hawks, trained for the chase like the others which were
rendered to Athelstan.
Joseph Strutt thinks that the Confessor wrote, or
commanded to be written, a treatise on hawking, J which
would be a valuable book, if we possessed it, showing the
growth of the sport. It is related of him that every day after
divine service was over he spent the rest of his leisure in
bunting or hawking. " It was his chiefest delight," says
Mr. Harting, quoting the historian, " to follow a pack of
swift hounds in pursuit of their game."§
There is one very interesting and ancient illustration of
hawking which is given in Strutt's work, and which is also
referred to by Mr. Harting, taken from a manuscript of the
tenth century.
It is a painting in six colours, representing a Saxon
nobleman on horseback, with a Gyr falcon on his right hand,
* English Trans., edn. 1815, p. 154.
t T.c, p. 28:=!.
| " Sports and Pastimes," 1801, p. 25.
§ " Essays on Sport," pp. 71, 72.
28 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
while his man has another which he is about to cast off at
some Wild Ducks on a lake or river, beside which an un-
mistakable Crane, in adult plumage as shown by its elevated
tertials, is stooping to feed, unconscious of any danger.
Names of Animals. — No account of the tenth century
Mould be complete without a reference to certain Saxon lists
of animals' names.* The principal one is known to Saxon
scholars as Archbishop iElfric's Vocabulary, and was probably
compiled for educational purposes. This singular list, and
another Vocabulary of slightly later date, perhaps in part
drawn up from the first, contain the names of nearly one
hundred birds. But it is not stated or implied by their
compilers that they are all British species : nor can they be,
for the Ostrich, Vulture, and Pelican are included. These
catalogues, giving the Latin and Saxon names, are by no
means valueless, but at the same time the identity of some
of the species is obscure.
The following are some of those named —
Cignus, ylfete. Mergus, scealfr.
Pauo, pawe. Mergulus, fugeldoppe.
Aquila, earn. Auca, gos.
Beacita, stearn. Aucarius, goshafuc.
Cornix, crawe. Anser, ganra.
Olor, swan. Anas, ened.
Ardea, hragra. Ciconia, store.
Ficednla, swertling. Rubisca, rudduc.
Strix, ule. Auricinctus, goldfinc.
Lucinia, nightegale. Alauda, lauerce.
The Colloquy of JElfric. — What is caUed The Colloquy
of iElfric is a series of dialogues for educational purposes,
between a master and his pupils, which after being privately
printed from Cottonian MSS., was published by Mr. T.
Wright in " Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies."-)-
From this dialogue a passage about hawking, which was
partly translated by the late Professor Newton for my father,
may be appropriately extracted. J
* Edited and collated by T. Wright in 1857, second edition 1884.
t P. 88.
| This hawking dialogue is also given in "A Perfect Booke for Kepirge
of Sparhaivkes or Goshawkes," edited by J. E. Harting.
TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 29
Magister : What say you, Auceps ? How do you beguile
birds ?
Auceps : I beguile birds in many ways ; sometimes with
nets, sometimes with snares, sometimes with bird-
lime, sometimes with a call, sometimes with a hawk,
sometimes with a decoy.
Magister : Have you a hawk ?
Auceps : I have.
Magister : Do you know how to tame them ?
Auceps : I do know. What use would they be to me if I did
not know how to tame them ?
Venator : Give me a hawk.
Auceps : I will willingly give you one, if you will give me
a swift dog. What hawk do you desire to have, a
larger or a smaller one ?
Venator : Give me a larger one.
Magister : How do you feed your hawks ?
Auceps : They feed themselves and me in winter, and in spring
I let them fly away to the wood, and I take the young
in autumn and tame them.
Magister : And why do you let your tamed hawks fly away ?
Auceps : Because I do not wish to feed them in summer,
for they eat too much.
Magister : Yet many people feed their tamed hawks through
the summer, that they may have them ready again.
Auceps : They do so, but I do not wish to take so much
trouble about them, for I know how to catch others,
not one only but more.
As indicated by Professor Newton, one of the points
of this dialogue is that the letting loose of a Gcshawk
or Sparrow-hawk to tend for itself and breed, mentioned
in at least one instance in the fifteenth century — see
" Hawking in Norfolk," by A. Newton (Lubbock's " Fauna of
Norfolk") — was no exceptional practice at a much earlier
date. Another point, as Mr. Harting observes (in lift.), is
the describing of the various methods of bird-catching
adopted in Anglo-Saxon times, which is not without interest.
Legends of Birds. A Fveroese Legend of a Foivl of Value.
— Undoubtedly some of the legends of the North are of
antiquity ; and a history of the early annals of ornithology
30 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
would hardly be complete without a reference to them, fur there
are many which have an important bearing upon birds : a
book, for instance, might be written on the folk-lore of the
Raven, and very curious it would be. It was not until the
seventeenth century that the Legendary or Credulous Period
of Natural History, as one writer aptly terms it, was laid to
rest, and finally disappeared. Then with the spread of
printing, it gave place to a better era — an era of investigation
at first hand, which elicited facts, and scattered idle beliefs
about birds and other animals. Although the legend about
the Solan Goose does not refer to the British Isles, it is worth
giving because of its age, and we shall probably not be wrong
in assigning it to the tenth century.
A certain sorcerer in the Faeroes — a group of islands
between Iceland and the Shetlands — who flourished many
centuries ago, seeking peace after many fights from one
who was a giant, bribed the foe with the yearly promise of
" a sort of Whales and Fowl in the Land, which were not
gotten in other places of Feme." This priceless Fowl was
the " Sule," or Solan Goose, which w r as then and there
bestowed by the sorcerer on the island of Myggenaes, where
they breed to this day. This strange story, which is another
evidence to the antiquity of the name " Sule," or Solan, is
related by Lucas Jacobus Debes in the " Fa?roe and Fseroa
Reserata," 1673.
A New Zealand Legend. — Sir Walter Buller tells us that
the Australian Gannet (Sula senator) has a place in an ancient
fable of New Zealand, in which one of the Maori legends
recounts a trial of strength which is supposed to take place
between the birds of the sea and the birds of the land.*
The Legend of the Barnacle. — Although we have no docu-
mentary evidence of the famous legend of the Barnacle before
the twelfth century, yet we may surmise that it existed in
England before that. There is no mention of the fable in
classical authors, yet Sir Ray Lankester tells of an un-
mistakable drawing of a ship's barnacle producing a young
Goose, which occurs on a Mycenaean vase dug up in Crete.
From what origin the story sprang it is not easy to comprehend.
* " Birds of New Zealand " (1S8S), II., p. 148.
TENTH AXD ELEVENTH CENTURIES 31
All we know is that widely spread was the belief that certain
birds called Barnicle or Barnacle Geese, which one would think
were not common enough to be familiar, owed their origin
to an aberrant crustacean Lepas anatifera, from which they
were generated.
Even as late as the sixteenth century, a naturalist of so
high repute as William Turner could not shake himself free
from the accumulated evidence of this absurd story, the truth
of which had been solemnly vouched for by one Octavian, an
Irish ecclesiastic of his acquaintance.
Legends of the Raven. — Anglo-Saxon Hrcefen, from its cry.
Hrefnes-fot, raven-foot. Proverbs respecting the Raven are
many. An interesting account is given by the Rev. C. Swainson
of this bird in " Provincial Names and Folk-lore " (18S5),
under the headings of : —
Folk-lore of the Raven.
The Raven in Northern Mythology.
The Raven as prognosticating Death.
The Raven Stone.
The Swallow-Stone — The legend of the SwalJow-stone
ran as follows. It was supposed by the peasantry of France
that the Swallow knew how and where to find a certain
small round pebble, or as some say, the polished operculum of
a shell from the shore. This talisman had the marvellous
power of giving sight to its young ones when applied to their
still unopened eyes, and it was soon discovered that it was
efficacious also for human ophthalmia. The legend, which is
told at greater length in " La Normandie Romanesque," by
Amelie Bosquet, flourished most in Brittany, but it had a
standing elsewhere, with some variation of detail.*
Eleventh Century.
Falconry and Domesday Book.
England in the Eleventh Century. The Pastime of
Falconry. — Falconry seems to have grown in favour with
each succeeding generation. History abundantly proves that
in the estimation both of the Saxons and their conquerors the
Normans, to bo the bearer (f a Hawk wrs one rf the chief
* 1845, p. 217. For an excellent account of this legend see Harting's
"Essays on Sport pnd Nstural History," p. 277.
32 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
privileges of nobility. No one of inferior rank was permitted
to appear in public with his Goshawk, even if he possessed
one, so distinctive was it considered to be. It will be observed
that two of the figures in the cut are ladies, but there was
nothing unusual in this : women sometimes accompanied men
in the diversion of hawking, and sometimes went out alone.
If, says Strutt, we may believe John of Salisbury, who died
in 1180 (Lib. I., cap. 4), some even excelled the men in know-
ledge and exercise of the art. That hawking should be
forbidden to clerics was to be expected, but as the case of
Bishop Boniface proves, the prohibition was not always
enough to restrain the more ardent ecclesiastics, in spite of
the law which said : '" si clericus venationes exei'cuerit, I
annum pcenitent."
In the celebrated Bayeux tapestry, Harold, King of
England is represented approaching William, Duke of
Normandy, mounted, and bearing upon his hand a Hawk.
It is commonly supposed to have been a Sparrow-Hawk, but
in the tapestry it is almost large enough to be an Eagle.
The Duke also has his Hawk, and hounds are not wanting.
This King and also William II., and their Courts, were
greatly addicted to hunting and hawking, which led to much
overbearance. So lightly was life valued that it was less
criminal to slay a man than to purloin a Tiercel. It was the
same with game. Terrible penalties, such as the loss of both
eyes, were meted out to peasants or villeins who killed
game reserved for William and his nobles. As he forbade
the slaying of Harts, so also did he of Wild Boars, but
not of Hares.
In order to keep the New Forest solely for hunting,
William I. is accused of laying waste a large tract, expellino-
the inhabitants of Hampshire. The chronicler Malmesbury
draws a melancholy picture of the forest, as a spot appro-
priated for the nurture and refuge of wild beasts, where
before had existed human intercourse, and the worship of God,
a place where Deer, Goats, and other animals, which were not
for the general service of mankind, now ranged unrestrained.*
Such was this monarch's passion for the chase that nothing
could stay his impetuosity.
* "De Gestis Regum," 1125. Lib. III.
34 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
As an example of the violence of William's temper, it is
related by Dugdale that when Fitz-Osberne, the Steward of
the Household, set before him the flesh of a Crane scarce half
roasted, the King took such offence that he lifted up his fist
and would have struck him fiercely, but that his dapifer Eudo
warded off the blow.*
Domesday Book. — In 1080 or 1085 William ordered the
commencement of a General Survey of England — Liber
Censualls Anglice — known as the Dome's-day or Doom's-
day Book. This great document was intended to be a
register whereby to determine the right in the tenure of
estates, and for the proper making of it Commissioners
were sent into every county and shire, except the four most
northern ones. These Commissioners associated themselves
with leading persons in each shire, and their duty was to
elicit information on various points, including the number of
" Servi," Freemen, and Tenants in each Manor, the number
of oxen, swine and sheep, the quantity of wood, meadow
and pasture, with particulars of any fish-ponds, or liver
fisheries ; even the eyries of Hawks were recorded, and the
number of eels which a particular mill and its stream might
afford to the proprietor.
Sir Henry Ellis states that besides the New Forest,
four other forests are noticed in the Domesday Survey,
viz., Windsor Forest, Gravelinges in Wilts, Wimburne in
Dorset, and Wychwood in Oxfordshire. f Silva and Nemus
are the usual terms in the Survey for wood, and in a few
entries Silvula. On account of the running and feeding of
numerous herds of hogs, acorns and beechmast had a degree
of importance of which we can form a very inadequate idea
at this time. J These pigs were the sustenance on which the
country folk principally depended, and which the King's
severity might cause them to lose.
The eyries of Hawks in William's time were thought of
no small value, for it was these which principally contributed
to the sport of falconry. The word " eyrie or " aerie " is
perhaps capable of two meanings. Sir Henry Ellis, in his
* " Baronage of England." 1675, p. 109.
f "General Introduction to Domesday Book." 1833, Vol. I., p. 103.
% V.c, pp. 90, 97.
TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 35
" General Introduction to Domesday Book,"* quotes authority
for thinking that it meant not only the nest or brood, but the
place destined for the breeding or training of Hawks, in
evidence of which he cites a charter granted by Henry III. in
the thirteenth century to the Church of York.j
There are frequent mentions of Hawks' "aeries" in
Domesday, sometimes in conjunction with manorial or other
rights, which Sir H. Ellis has been at the pains of collecting, J
One of the instances of a Hawks' breeding-place in the south
of England cited by Ellis was in Sussex, on land belonging
to Battle Abbey, which was founded by William I., where were
" iii nidi accipitr' in silua." These nests may have belonged
to Peregrines, or more probably to Goshawks if they were in
woods, for the nest of a Sparrow-Hawk would hardly have
been of sufficient consequence to specify. § Eyries of Hawks
are also noticed in Domesday in Bucks, Gloucester,
Worcester, Hereford, Shropshire, and, more frequently
than in other counties, in Cheshire, || as well as among the
lands between the Ribble and the Mersey.
The Great Fen District uf East Anglia. — This is all the
information about birds to be extracted from Domesday Book,
but there are still a few other sources which can be tapped.
The natural features of England in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries differed less from those of the twentieth than is
commonly supposed, but there was much more woodland.
In 1217 Henry III. granted a Charter of the Forests, -which
perhaps reached their greatest extent in Lancashire and
Yorkshire ; there were also large untouched tracts in
Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Notts; while
in the south and east of England there was more water and
marsh. Especially must this have been so in what was
known as the Fen Country of east England, where the Romans
* Vol. I., p. 341.
| For a good exposition of the various forms of this word, and its earliest
tise bv authors see Swarm's " Dictionary of English and Folk-names of British
Birds," p. 2.
{ T.C., p. 340.
S The Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain reminds me that, although British Pere-
grines, and Buzzards, also, now nest upon cliffs, yet they breed freely upon
trees elsewhere, and no doubt used' to do so in England.
|| See "The Birds of Cheshire," by Coward and Oldham, p„ IS.
36 EAELY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
had tried their hands at draining and not succeeded. What this
wild tract, which comprised Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon,
as well as a large part of Lincolnshire and West Norfolk, was
like in the time of William the Conqueror, may be imagined by
comparing it with the deltas of the Rhone or the Nile, as they
exist at the present day. The eastern boundary of the Fen
district, so far as Norfolk was concerned, commenced, says
Henry Stevenson, " immediately below the toAvn of Brandon,
in the low ground, through which the Little Ouse winds its
way, and rounding the uplands of Hockwold, turns northwards
towards Methwold, then running up the course of the Wissey,
nearly as far as Stoke Ferry, it bends to the westward in the
direction of Denver, whence it pursues a comparatively straight
course to King's Lynn, being, however, slightly diverted to
the eastward up the valley of the Nar."*
The centre part of this great Fen area was little better
than an inland sea of brackish water in winter, and a swamp
in summer, suitable enough for aquatic birds, but noxious to
human beings, who gave it up to the possession of the Bittern,
the Godwit, and the Grey-lag Goose ; and maybe the Egret,
the Stilt, the Night Heron, and the Ibis were there too. No
Cornelius Vermuyden had as yet arisen, and Henry VII.
had not sanctioned the general drainage of that part of his
dominions, which must have beena wild birds' paradise, though
there were no ornithologists then to enjoy it. Fortunately we
possess the " Liber Eliensis " MS., which gives us some idea
of the wilderness of reeds and their attendant water-fowl ; when
this brief chronicle, the labour of some unknown monk, was
composed in the eleventh century, there could not have been
less than two thousand square miles of marsh and fen. A
good deal of it would have been literally teeming with wild-
fowl, Ducks of many sorts and kinds in the open water, with
Cranes, Bitterns, Spoonbills, and even Pelicans wherever the
quaking bog afforded them standing room. " De avibus . . ."
writes the author of the Liber, " Anseres innumerse, fiscedula 3 ,
felicse, mergse, corvse aquaticfe, ardese et anetes, quarum copia
maxima est brumali tempore vel cum aves pennas mutant,
per centum et tres centas captas vidi plus minusve :
nonnunquam in laqueis et retibus ac glutine capi
* " The Birds of Norfolk," by Henry Stevenson (Vol. I., p. LIV.).
TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 37
solent." * This list of birds is repeated with some slight altera-
tion in the legendary narrative of some later monk, where one
Beda is made to say : " Of birds likewise there be innumerable :
So also of geese, bitterns, sea-fowl, water-crows, herons, and
ducks, abundance ; . . . "f Even more plentiful than birds
were the fish, and to the monasteries these were the most
valuable. Innumerable eels, the Liber tells us, Mere netted,
great pike, pickerels, perch, roach, barbel, lampreys (which
were called water-snakes), and sometimes shad, and a royal
fish, the turbot, was taken, t
Besides the testimony of the Liber, we have that of
that grand old chronicler, 'William of Malmesbury, before
quoted, who had heard of the character of the fens, if he had
not personally been there. Writing in 1125 he says, " Here is
such plenty of fish as to cause astonishment in strangers, while
the natives laugh at their surprise. Water -fowl are as plentiful ;
so that five persons may not only assuage their hunger with
both sorts of food, but eat to satiety for a penny." § Such was
the character which these wild wastes of water bore, the home
of monastic institutions, as well as a haven of security.
Hugh Albus, or Candidus. — Of beasts there were not
many. The stagnant water of the fens would have been too
sluggish to please the Beaver, yet its bones have been found
in a semi-fossilised condition, as well as those of the Wild
Boar. [| Of Polecats there would have been plenty, and of
Otters any number with so much fish to prey on.
None of these creatures are alluded to by another author
not often quoted, Hugh Albus or Candidus, who, writing about
1150, has left a scanty sketch of Fenland. " From the flooding
of the rivers, or from their overflow," he says, " the water
standing on unlevel ground makes a deep marsh and so renders
the land uninhabitable, save on some raised spots of ground.
. . . There are found wood and twigs for fires, hay for the
* " Historia Eliensis " (Bk. II., ch. 105) ; I am indebted to Prof . Bensly for
verifying the reference, and spelling.
f " The History of Imbanking and Draining;" by Sir William Dugdale,
p. 187.
$ See notes communicated by the translator, the Bev. D. J. Stewart,
editor of the Liber, to " The Fenland Past and Present " (p. 355).
§ " Gesta Pontificum," translation.
|j " On the Zoology of Ancient Europe," by Alfred Newton (p. 24).
38 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
fodder of cattle, thatch for covering houses, and many other
useful things. It is moreover productive of birds and fishes.
For there are various rivers, and very many waters and ponds
abounding in fish." Besides the " An seres innumerse " of tiie
" Liber Eliensis, " the Bitterns, the Mallards, the Coots and
Herons, which were all food for a scan t}^ population, and which
Hugh the White probably had in mind, there were many other
birds, could we but know their names. Also there were eels,
which formed a staple article of food. By a very early Saxon
Charter we learn that " I Eadgaf, King . . . added to the
former gift, every year, for those monks [of the Abbey of
Ely] ten thousand Eel fishes . . . ." Four thousand eels were
a yearly present from the monks of Ramsey to those of
Peterborough.* "In Wisbece abb do Ramesi viii piscatores,
reddv mil 7 cc. lx anguill " (Domesday), — a large contribution
for these fishermen to pay. Ely is even supposed to take its
name from the eels, and certainly the isle enjoyed great
advantages from its fresh-water fisheries. Domesday dis-
tinguishes the owners of fishing rights as piscatores, and no
doubt they were people of importance, and not at all confined
to the fens. In Norfolk there were thirty-two piscatores, and
Domesday allows as many as twenty-four for Suffolk.
The Keeping of Bees, Swine, and Fowls. — But it must not
be supposed that all England was like the Fen country.
Tillage -\vas carried on by the Saxon population in wide
districts with a thrift and labour which brought in an
abundant yield, in spite of the oppression exercised by William
and his nobles. Coincident with the advance of agriculture,
the rearing of bees had been an important part of Saxon
industry, and was one which could be easily continued.
The apium custos was one of the assistants in husbandry
enumerated in Domesday.
Of the rights of Fisheries, by no means confined to fresh
water, we have already had evidence, and many traces which
still show their importance are extant. Swine were largely
bred, but can have been little more than semi-domesticated.
Much of the value of the forests consisted in the oak and
beech mast, which supplied food to the numerous herds, and,
according to the laws of King Ine (or Ini), the worth of a tree
* Dngdale's " Mcnasticon Anglicanum " (Vol. II., p. 546, and V., p. 144).
TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 39
was reckoned by the number of swine which could stand
under it. Porcarii are frequently mentioned in Domesday,
and these were not mere swineherds, but rich men who
rented the privilege of feeding pigs in the woodlands :
Sir Henry Ellis often alludes to them in his researches.*
Fowls seem to have been universally kept, although perhaps
not in considerable numbers. It was a practice, often quoted,
to pay fowls in lieu of other rent, where coin was very scarce,
as in the Fen district of Lincolnshire, known by the name
of Holland, or hay-land. Thus Pishey Thompson states
that in 1279 sixty fowls were paid in lieu of five shillings,
twelve in lieu of one shilling, and twenty-eight in lieu of two
shillings and fourpence, which are entered in the extents
of the Honour of Richmond. f Such instances might be
further multiplied. These fowls were probably rather
smaller than fowls at the present day, yet judging from the
rough cuts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — in one of
which an old hen is represented with a nestling on her back —
they were such as could be matched now in many a farmyard.
The Abbey Church at Waltham. — We next come across
the names of some birds in connection with the Abbey
Church at Waltham, in Essex, which was founded in the
time of Canute, viz., the Crane, Thrush, Partridge, Pheasant,
Magpie, Goose, Fowl, and Falcon. J The Pheasant and the
Magpie, which are quite sufficiently identified, are here
mentioned especially. These names occur in a bill of fare drawn
up for monastic use in 1059, and preserved in a manuscript
stated by Professor Dawkins to have been written about 1177.§
The Monks- of Rochester in Kent. — In 1089 we find an
assignment to the monks of Rochester from certain lands
belonging to Bishop Randulfus, of sixteen Pheasants, thirty
Geese, three hundred Hens, a thousand Lampreys, a thousand
eggs, four Salmon, and sixty sheaves of finest wheat. ||
* Ellis, " Introduction to Domesday," Vol. I., p. 88, et seg.
f " Boston and The Hundred of Skirbeok in the County of Lincoln,"
by P. Thompson, p. 169.
t See "The Foundation of Waltham Abbey," by W. Stubbs.
si "Ibis," 1S69, p. 358. The next mention of the Pheasant is in 1100, and
again in 1179 and li99. In Ireland we first hear of it in 1589. and in Scotland
in 1594, when it comes into an Act passed by James VI. (14th Pari. Edin.)
who had not then ascended the English throne.
II Dugdale's " Monasticon Anglicanum " (Vol. I., additions).
Chapter IV.
TWELFTH CENTURY.
The Twelfth Century : Hawking, described by chroniclers. Fines Paid in
Falcons. Giraldus Cambrensis.
Hawking in the Twelfth Century. — As has been already
said, one leading feature in the lives of our Saxon and Norman
ancestors was their vehement love of Falconry. There was
something attractive in the art of training one bird to catch
another, and then yield up its prey to its master. It was
an ancient pursuit, far older than the Christian era, and so
honourable an occupation Avas it considered that people carried
a hawk on their fists when there was no intention whatever
of hunting. This was so when Thomas a Becket went to
France in 1158; on this occasion his retinue included hawks
and hounds of different kinds. Yet probably neither Becket
nor his numerous servants had thought of flying the hawks.
It was the fashion to be accompanied by falcons and falconers
as a mark of gentility, and this was carried on by the rich
long after the twelfth century, a fact of which the later
chronicles afford abundant evidence. Although among the
manuscripts of the twelfth century there is no treatise on
falconry extant in England, unless the Saxon colloquies are
to be so termed, Mr. Harting has discovered laws on the subject
in Spain.* The code in question consists of regulations,
supposed to have been promulgated in a.d. 1180, by order
of Sancho VI., King of Navarre. From these, observes Mr.
Harting, it appears that the Hawks used in Navarre in 1180
were the Falcon, the Goshawk and the Sparrow-Hawk. They
were taken young from the nest and reared in the hawk-house,
fed upon meal paste, mixed with the flesh of birds, such as
Pigeons, Partridges or Water-Hens, cut up small, less paste
being given as the Hawk grew older until at length it was
strong enough to be fed twice a day on beef or mutton. When
* " Bibliotheca Accipitraria," by J. E. Harting, 1891, p. 111.
TWELFTH CENTURY 41
a month old, the training commenced, and for this directions
are given.
In England, as in France, Goshawks and Falcons were
flown in the open country, but the keeping of them was not
confined to country establishments; on the contrary it
extended to towns and even to the city of London. " Many
citizens," says William Fitz-Stephen, who wrote a tract
in the twelfth century relating to the metropolis, " take
delight in Sparrow-hawks, Goss-hawks, and such like and
in Dogs to hunt in the woody ground." From the context
he is here alluding more particularly to forests on the north
side of London, where, according to this author, there lurked
Bucks and Does, Wild Boars, and Bulls, the latter probably
in a semi -wild state.
Mews for Hawks and Falcons in London. — The practice
of keeping Hawks in London, which may have been partly
for use in processions, was not discontinued, for in the
fourteenth century we learn that Richard II. still had them
in mews at Charing Cross. This fact is related by John
Stow, who wrote a Survey of London in 1598 (republished
1754).* Yet, as Mr. Mullens remarks, there was clear country
within easy reach of London, as at Mortlake and Richmond,
where hawking could be practised if desired. Another early
allusion to Falcons being used for the chase is cited in the
" History and Antiquities of Furness Abbey " by T. A. Beck,
and Mitchell's "Birds of Lancashire" (p. xiv.). The reference
is to an eyrie of hawks which was reserved on certain
mortgaged lands at the time of the second Crusade, i.e.,
between 1135 and 1153.
* Stow is not the only writer who mentions them, for John Norden,
writing five years earlier (1593), has the following about the rebuilding of the
Royal Mews. " King Henry VIII caused it most especially to be erected for a
place wherein to preserve his haukes, and therein to mew them ; and placed
in the middle of the court or yard a Dovehouse for feeding them, which is now
decayed. It serveth now for a most stately stable for Her Majesty's [Q.
Elizabeth] horses and palphrayes " (" Speculi Britanniae Pars" printed for
The Camden Soc, p. xviii). It is said to have been this and similar con-
versions which account for the present meaning which the word " mews
bears, viz. a stable or place for the housing of horses. These Charing Cross
Hawk-Mews were about where the National Gallery now stands. Their fate
was that of so many other old houses — to be eventually burnt, with, the
historian tells us, many great horses and much hay, see Stow's " Survey of
London and Westminster " (Vol. II., p. 576). I find the name retained in a
map as recent as 1761.
42 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Fines Paid in Falcons. — This was a period when " fines,"
as they were called, were levied in kind. The word " fine "
did not bear the meaning which it has now ; in most cases
it was not inflicted as a punishment, but as a tax, and these
receipts formed a large part of the Crown revenue. In this
connection it will be proper to cite what Thomas Madox
has to say about the collecting of these fines in King Stephen's
reign (1U97-1154), in his "History and Antiquities of the
Exchequer" (1711). The law did not insist on their being
collected in coin, which was only to be found in the coffers of
the barons, and in which the lesser gentry could not pay.
We find that the Crown payment was more often rendered
in such kind as Palfreys, with gilt spurs and other appur-
tenances, Destriers (war-horses), Chasours (hunting-horses),
Leveiiers (grey-hounds), Brachets (scent-hounds), Gupilerets*
(fox-hounds), Hawks and Girfals (Gyr Falcons). Of tins we
have many instances.
In the year 1139 one Outi, a gentleman of Lincolnshire,
had to render to the Exchequer under the name of a fine,
'* one Hundred Norivay Hawks and one Hundred Girfals : Four
of the Hawks and Six of the Girfals were to be While ones ;
if he could not get Four White Hawks, he was to give Four
White Girfals instead of them."t
It is to be presumed the " White Gyrfals " were what we
now know as Greenland Falcons, and the " White Hawks "
perhaps were what Ave call Iceland Falcons.
Either in the same reign, or in the reign of Henry II.
(1153-1189), Ralf son of Drogo, and four other defaulters,
were made to supply good hunting hawks, and the much
prized Gyr Falcons in lieu of marks of silver. Others were
made to meet their liabilities by rendering up such home
produce as bulls and mares. One Ernald de Aclent had to
produce no fewer than a hundred and forty palfreys, and Robert
de Ellestede six bald (i.e., smooth) Vulperets or fox-dogs.
These instances are taken from Madox's " History,"
chapter IX. " Of the species wherein the ancient Crown
* Mr. Harting reminds me that Golpileret is from the Norman Golpil
or Goupil, a fox, sec Kelham's Norman Dictionary. " Girfals " is a not
infrequent contraction for GirfaJcons.
t T.c, p. 180.
TWELFTH CENTURY 43
Revenue was usually paid," but more of the same kind are
given in chapter XIIL, "Fines of Divers Sorts."
Thus (page 3 IS) the Earl of Warenne is fined one
Palfrey and one Sore * (i.e., young) Hawk.
P. 324. Nicholas the Dane was to give the King a
Hawk every time he came into England.
P. 325. Geoffrey Fitz-Pierre was fined in two good
Norway Hawks, that Walter le Madine might have leave to
export a hundredweight of cheese.
P. 350. The Bishop of Norwich was fined in two palfreys
for a Crane (pro qitadam grue) — the meaning here is not
very evident, unless it indicates, as suggested by Mr. Harting
(in lift.) that he had killed a Crane on Crown land without
license.
P. 352. William de Cyrhiton was fined in one good
" hautein falcon." literally one of proud bearing, but meaning
here in high condition.
And so on, these old payments are certainly very curious,
as throwing light on the manners of the times. Moreover,
Mr. Harting has pointed out that not only were all these
" fines " or taxes paid in land, as Madox here describes, but
that prisoners were sometimes ransomed by a payment of
Hawks. t
Under the heading of " Nota rem inauditam," the
following strange relation of what appears to be a true incident
is to be found in the Chronicle of Roger of Wendover : —
"In the same year [1191] a young man of the bishop of
London's household taught a hawk [nisum] especially to hunt
teals ; and once at the sound of the instrument called a tabor
* " Sore" is an adjective, meaning red or reddish, coming, like a good
many other hawking terms, from the old Norman language, and was generally
applied to a Sparrow-Hawk of the first year. Originally spelled Sor, the
word now stands in modern French, slightly altered, as Saure, with exactly
the same meaning. Prof. Newton in his Dictionary finds the word akin to
Sorrel, as applied to a horse of a reddish-brown colour.
The term continued in use for some centuries, of which we find an instance
in the famous Paston correspondence. In September 1472 John Paston writes
from Norwich to his elder brother : " I pray God send you all your desyrs,
and me my mwyd ["mewed, i.e. moulted] gosshawk in hast, or rather than
fayle, a sowyr hawke."
A "Sore Sparrow-Hawk " is well figured under that name in Rowley's
" Ornithological Miscellany " (Vol. I., p. 51).
f It was on these terms that a Welsh bishop captured by King John
was allowed his liberty in 1212 ("Essays on Sport," p. 73).
44 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
by those who dwelt on the river's bank, a teal suddenly Hew
quickly away ; but the hawk baffled of his booty intercepted
a pike swimming in the water, seized him, and carried him
apparently forty feet on dry land. ..."
This is the same story rather differently referred to in
" Hints on the Management of Hawks," p. 171, where the
author suggests that the bird may have been an Osprey ;
the word stands in the original as nisus. The use of a
tabor or drum for rousing water-fowl was not unusual, see
Wright's " History of Domestic Manners," p. 308.
Giraldus Cambrensis, his references to Hawks. — We next
turn to the writings of Gerald de Barri, called Cambrensis,
and here again there is something about Falconry. In his
" Topographica Hibernica " (1183-1186), Giraldus treats
first of Hawks and Falcons, noticing that the female
was larger than the male, and making other observations
which Mr. Harting finds to be exact at the present day.*
" Eagles are as numerous here [in Ireland] as Kites are in
other countries," he says (ch. IX.). Giraldus was probably
familiar with the Kites in English towns, inclusive of London.
In another place he says (ch. VIII.) : —
" This country produces in greater number than any
other hawks, falcons, and sparrow-hawks [nisos], a class of
birds which nature has endowed with courageous instincts
and armed with curved and powerful beaks and sharp talons
to fit them as birds of prey." This looks as if he did not
write altogether from hearsay, but from observation. Then
comes a curious story, but it is one which might hold
good of other countries besides Ireland. " It is, however,"
he says (I follow Forrester's translation), " a remarkable
fact in the history of this tribe of birds, that their nests are
not more numerous than they were many centuries ago ; and
although they have broods every year, their numbers do not
increase."
This is exactly what has struck many a modern naturalist
not only in regard to birds of prey, but about many other
species as well. The explanation of it must be that a certain
extent of land is meant to hold a certain number of birds,
and the rest either migrate or die. There would not be food
* " Zoologist," 1881, p 436.
TWELFTH CENTURY
45
enough for all, and if the young (or most of them) did not dis-
appear the balance of nature would soon be upset somewhere.
GiroMus winds up with some pertinent remarks on fal-
conry, which he cannot but have witnessed himself, in which
he describes the hawk soaring high in wide circles, and then
the velocity of its stoop, and the endeavours of the hard-
pressed quarry to escape, as it "flits from side to side, now high,
now low, while all the spectators are filled with delight."
One might imagine oneself in the company of an
enthusiastic modern falconer. Falcons he considers more
pertinacious than Sparrow-hawks, and at the same time he
knows them to be " more ready to return to their keeper
when he raises his hand, or even at his call."
CRANES IN IRELAND.
In chapter XIII. Giraldus alludes to the exportation of
Gyrfalcons and Goshawks from Iceland, but the latter species
is not known to inhabit Iceland. Hailing, however, states
the Gyrfalcon was sometimes called Gos-falcon,* which is a
sufficient explanation of what would otherwise be an error.
In his Welsh Itinerary (ch. XII.) Giraldus favours us with
a singular story of a Kite which seized a weasel, and, flying
into the air with it, was presently bitten by the little animal,
and so fell dead. This is quite credible, for similar instances
have been recorded of other rapacious birds in modern
times. In 1188 Giraldus travelled with Archbishop Baldwin
through Wales, which was his native country. In the itinerary
of this journey mention is made of Deer, Wild Boars and
Beavers, of Falcons of a generous kind, and of a bird called
the Aureolus, possibly the Green Woodpecker which, seen from
* " Essays on Sporf,"' p SO.
46 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
above, looks very yellow, and which would be likely to attract
notice by its loud cry.
Another chapter of the " Topographica Hibernica " treats
of the Crane, said to be so common in Ireland that " uno
in grege centum, et circiter hunc numerum frequenter
invenias." These may have been only Herons, but the
statement is backed by two pictures of Cranes in the Giraldus
MS. preserved in the British Museum.
Other birds enumerated by Giraldus are the Merlin,
Hobby, Kingfisher (aviculce quas martinetas vacant), Shrike.
Raven, Hooded- and Carr ion-Crows, Grouse, Capercaillie (?),
Quail, Woodcock, Snipe, Land-Rail and Wild Swan.
Giraldus further describes a white Goose called a " Gante,"
which was wont to come to Ireland " in multitudine magna."
Probably he only meant a migratory species of Grey Goose,
but the passage is obscure, and puzzled Mr. J. F. Dimock.
In this sense Gante is employed by Venatius
Fortunatus —
" Aut Mosa dulce sonans quo grus, ganta, anser, olorque ;
Triplice merce ferax, alite, pisce, rate." — Lib. 7, Poem 4
— and by other writers quoted in the " Glossarium
ad scriptores " (1733), of Du Cange, the French historian.
" Gante " was used in the " Rolls of Normandy " of the twelfth
century for the domestic Goose, from which it lias descended
to families of that name at the present day.
•Saint Cuthbert's Birds. — Before quitting the twelfth century
a word must be bestowed on the Fame Islands, a rich nursery
of birds upon the Northumbrian coast, and doubtless a
breeding-place of great antiquity. Such a resort of Gulls
and Guillemots might be expected to have bequeathed
us some early legends about its sea-fowl, yet only one
has been preserved. A monk who lived in the twelfth
century, and was known as Reginald of Durham ■ (d. 1173),
has left an historical chronicle — printed in Vol. I. of the
Surtees Society's Publications* — wherein is described a
miracle in connection with certain birds on the Fame Islands,
one of which, presumably an Eider Buck, was killed and
eaten by a manservant named Leving. After commencing
* 1835, I., p. GO, Cap. XXVII.
TWELFTH CENTURY 47
with a pretty good description of that species, and describing
the subsequent miracle, the monk goes on to speak of " Lorries,"
with which he appears to have confounded the Eider Luck.
" Aves illse Beati Cuthberti specialiter nominantur ; ab
anglis vero Lomes vocantur ; ab Saxonibus autem et qui
Frisiam incohmt Eires dicuntur." Loon or Loom is understood
to mean a bird which is awkward on land, and deficient in
walking powers. Both these names have been applied to
the Divers, but the reference here is most likely to the
Guillemot, which no doubt was then, as now, very abundant
on the Fame Islands.
The word " Eires " is not so plain, but is perhaps synony-
mous with Alk = an auk. Professor Skeat has pointed out
that it can hardly mean Eider Ducks in this passage,* as
the editor of Reginald's Chronicle supposes, f abundant as
is that species on the coast of Northumberland. It may be
remarked also that Aron or Arron, a word which might be
latinised as Eire, for it is very similar, is found, as has been
indicated by Mr. 0. V. Aplin, to be a local name for the
Guillemot in parts of Wales (" Zoologist," 1902, p. 109).
Mr. Aplin, who is no doubt right in thinking that it is
taken from the bird's cry, also draws attention (in lift.) to
the use of Arrie for the Guillemot in Russia, and Airo, which
is nearly identical, in Portugal — see note by A. C. Smith,
" Ibis," 1868, p. 457.
* " Xotes and Queries," 1912, p. 115.
j T.c, p. 332.
Chapter V.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
The Thirteenth Century: King John. Edward I. Decoys. Household
Accounts. The Crossbill. The Solan Goose.
As we enter another century we become a little better
acquainted with the English people and begin to know
something of their sports from the pages of Strutt, as well
as of viands on their dinner-table, the animals which they
chased, and even a few of the birds. Of all their pastimes,
none continued to be in greater vogue than the chase with
Falcons and Goshawks, even ladies and church dignitaries
excelled in it. The Hawk, its head covered with a hood which
effectually prevented it from seeing anything prematurely,
was carried on its master's wrist, protected by a thick glove,
while straps of leather were put on its legs for holding purposes,
and small bells which would reveal its whereabouts if lost.
All our earlier English monarchs were addicted to hawking,
both Edward II. and Edward III. evinced a taste for this
kind of sport, and where royalty led the way nobles and
squires would not be slow to follow. The panegyric of
Bartholomew de Glanville on the Goshawk is very character-
istic of the times when a feat of falconry rivalled a noble deed
of arms. The Franciscan friar dilates on its merits with
enthusiastic ardour, a royal fowl is the only name worthy to
be applied to the favourite of the chase, which he quaintly
describes as " armed more with boldness than with claws."
He deemed his brave Goshawk to be one of a disdainful sort,
" for if," says he, " she fail by any hap of the prey that she
reseth [riseth] to that day unneth [scarcely] she cometh unto
her lord's hand."* The falconer's favourite sport was to
rly Hawks at Cranes, if he could find them. Cranes are
continually mentioned in connection with hawking, but the
* " De Proprietatibus Rerum," eh. II., in Berthelet's translation: to Mr.
Mullens I am indebted for the passage.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY 49
question is, were not these so-called Cranes in some cases
only Herons ? There is no reason why the geographical
distribution of the Crane should have altered ; on the other
hand, the extensive morasses and immunity from firearms are
in favour of its having once been much more abundant in
England, and undoubtedly it has given its name to places in
the eastern counties.* King John appears to have been of
the number of those who took delight in hawking. In 1209
this King, disappointed at finding so little game wherewith
to exercise his Falcons, issued a proclamation forbidding the
taking of wild-fowl in his domains, a step which would ensure
in a few years a better supply for the sport of hawking. Three
years later he feasted, Mr. Harting tells us, a certain number
of the poor for every Crane taken by his Hawks, a liberality
which would encourage them to leave his game alone, and it
was probably done with that object. At another time,
having taken the field with his Falcons, and again been satisfied
with the sport obtained. King John commanded his retainers
to feed a hundred paupers with a dinner of bread, meat and
ale, which was a luxury to the common people. In 1212
King Jolm is stated to have flown his Hawks at Cranes in
Cambridgeshire, and to have killed seven. Either the same
year, or in 1213, he flew his Gyr Falcons in Lincolnshire and
took nine more Cranes. f
So great was his love of falconry that when his army
entered Wales, and captured Rotpert of Shrewsbury, the
ransom fixed by John was two hundred Hawks, that being
preferred to a fine in money (Lhoyd's " Historie of Cambria,"
1584). A recent writer has hazarded an opinion that these were
Peregrines from Stackpole, but for this there is no authority ;
indeed, so many could not have been obtained from one locality.
Again, we learn from " Manners and Household Expenses
of England " that in 1218 Henry III. sent Geoffrey de Hauville
with four Gyr Falcons and seven grey-hounds into Bedfordshire
and Cambridgeshire for the purpose of catching Cranes.f
* Also it must not he forgotten that not longer ago than 1544 William
Turner, who will be fully quoted in another chapter, said he had very often
seen their young ones.
f " Rotulus Misse Anno Regis Johannis, 1212-13," as quoted in " Essays
on Sport," p. 77.
+ P. xlvi., quoted from Rot. Claus., 2 Hen. III.
E
50 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Perhaps it was a captured Crane brought home by some
falconer to which a rather singular allusion occurs in 1265 in
" The Household Roll of the Countess of Leicester."* Here
a payment is made to a boy for seeking a Crane in a well,
or more likely, as Mr. Evans suggests, in some wet place or
marsh. f In 1282 Edward I. sent to Spain for the King of
Castille four grey G}'r-falcons for Crane and Heron hawking. J
In 1298 falconers took Cranes in Cambridgeshire, which were
presented to the King.§ The passage having reference to
them, as quoted by Mr. Harting from the King's Wardrobe
accounts, runs : —
" Jan. 5. To Alexander Coo, The King's falconer, for
presenting to the King 3 Cranes taken in Cambridgeshire by
the Ger-falcons of Sir Geoffrey de Hauville ... 6s. 8d.
(half a mark)."
These Ger-falcons may have been from Iceland, forwarded
to England via Norway. Mr. H. Slater cites very earl}'
instances of Falcons being sent from that country, in one
instance even to Tunis. ||
The Price of Hawks.^ — Mr. Harting, in his admirable
" Ornithology of Shakespeare," has collected (p. 77) various
prices paid for Hawks and Falcons, which, as they were trained
birds, ran into high figures, one " cast " alone costing as much
as £23. These large prices are very different from the small
sums given for wild Hawks in the thirteenth century, which
* Shakespeare Press, 1841. " Scanners and Household Expenses of
England," edited for the Roxburgh© Club by B. Butfield, p. 57.
f Capons, Fowls and Geese are also named in the Countess's Roll, and
the editor points out that " pullagium," a term which is made use of, may
have comprehended other species. Eggs, which seem to have been an
important item in the menage, cost the Countess about fonrpence per
hundred : on Easter Sunday upwards of 1200 were purchased at Wallingford,
the greater part of which the editor supposes to have been stained and
given away as Pasque eggs.
J " Mittimus vobis quatuor Girofalcones grisos, quorum duo apti sunt
& instruct! ad grues & heruncellos " ("Foedera conventiones," ed. 1705,
p. 1087).
§ " Essays on Sport," p. 78.
|j "Manual of the Birds of Iceland," p. 32.
*[ Mr. Harting has been at the pams to search out several early statutes
relating to hawks and hawking, but finds nothing earlier than 1217. when
Henry III., then in the first year of his reign, and anxious to adopt a
conciliatory policy, granted by a Carta de Foresta (cap. XI.) the right to
every man to have eyries of hawks, sparrow-hawks, falcons and eagles in
his own woods (" The Management of Hawks," p. 243).
THIRTEENTH CENTURY 51
are cited by Professor Rogers in his " History of Agriculture
and Prices in England " (1866, Vol. II., p. 566).
In 1268, this author tells, us twelve Hawks at Framling-
ham cost fl\, and sixteen at Hoo /1|, while at Staverton
nine cost /2, eleven /li and two nets /3. In 1271 thirty-
four Hawks at Framlingham, which I suppose was the town
of that name in Suffolk, cost /2^, and in 1272 twenty-three at
Saham or Soham /2 -f-/3i.
Some of these Hawks' prices are taken from the records
of the earldom of Bigod, from lands held in Norfolk and
Suffolk, and Professor Rogers thinks (t.c, I., p. 164) the
bailiffs of the various manors encouraged the bringing of
young hawks from nests. There are also other items of
interest. In 1273 a Peacock's tail at Wytchurch is priced
/4§, and another in 1277 at Halvergate in Norfolk at /1£.
The Peacock was a bird on which our forefathers set great
store, chiefly because of its resplendence when served in its
feathers at banquets. Professor Rogers considers the pig to
have been the most important article of food in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. The low price of poultry suggests
to him that they were kept by the poorest classes in the
land. Fowls, Geese and Ducks were universally eaten, Peafowl
and Swans more rarely ; on some manors a large number
of tame Pigeons were kept. Hens' eggs were exceedingly
abundant, with no great variation of price. Rats and Moles
were considered nuisances, and payments were made for
destroying them. Rabbits do not seem to have been plentiful,
and the Professor remarks that he has not met with any entry
of the sale of Hares (I.e., Vol. I., p. 32). For taking Conies
and Partridges with hawk, dog and ferret at Waleton in 1272
4/6 was paid, while for taking five Crows and five Pies and
thirty-four rats at Weston, in 1297, 1/2 was charged.
Edward's Falconers. — Edward I., like his predecessors on
the English throne, John and Henry III., found plenty of time
for falconry. He had no fewer than eleven falconers with
two horses, and six falconers with one horse apiece. See
preface with notes to the " Roll of the Household Expenses of
Richard de Swinfield."* This prelate was bishop of Hereford,
* Camden Soc, 1855. For a reference to this Roll, which was edited by
Mr. J. Webb, I am indebted to the Rev. T. S. Cogswell.
52 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
and his expenses during 1289 and 1290, which have come
down to posterity, have been made accessible to antiquarians
by Mr. J. Webb. The Bishop's falconer was one Adam Harpin,
whose doings can be followed in several places. One of his
principal occupations was catching Partridges, with which
it was his duty to keep the episcopal table supplied. As
we find him provided with addiiional twine for his nets,
it is evident that he netted them, either at night, or possibly,
as Mr. Webb suggests, by means of a trained Hawk which
caused them to lie close.
How many Falcons he had under his care we are not told,
but perhaps several. At the beginning of March 1290 the
Bishop sent a favourite Falcon to Hereford Cathedral for
cure. In June of that year Harpin is employed in watching
young Falcons at some eyrie, in order to keep off thieves,
and catch them when sufficiently fledged, in which occupation
he seems to have had the assistance of John the huntsman,
another time the same duty is entrusted to the woodward
of Cradley, who has a reward for his services — sixpence.
To these men was entrusted the sole care of the Tiercels and
Falcons, a task of no slight responsibility. If a Hawk was
ill, or experienced some difficulty in getting through its moult,
all sorts of strange remedies were tried, and finally, if none
of these were effective, an offering was made at some shrine
for its recovery.
This offering might take the form of a waxen image of
the bird, of which an instance is cited by Thomas Rymer, at
Hereford,* where such a propitiation was placed on the tomb
of St. Thomas deCantelupe, with what success we are not told.
It appears from Rymer s " Foedera " that Edward I.
received Gyr Falcons from the King of Norway on more than
one occasion, and in 1282, we are told, he sent as a royal gift
to the King of Castille in Spain " quatuor Girofalcones grisos."f
From this passage some further particulars are given in the
fourth edition of Yarrell's " British Birds. "J
Blount's " Fragmenta Antiguitatis." — Thomas Blount, in
his " Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures of Land "
* T.C., Pref. l.
f " Foedera," 1705 p. 1087.
t Vol. r„ p 44.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY 53
(1679), cites many instances of the granting of lordships and
manors for the rent of a Hawk, to be rendered yearly.
See Section XI., entitled " Of Petit Serjeanties performed by
keeping for and delivering Hawks etc. to the King."
Thus we hear of a mewed Sparhawk to be delivered to
the King's Exchequer, of a Sore (i.e., young) Sparhawk to be
rendered at Lammas (August 1st), and of the mewing and
keeping of a Goshawk or a " Girefalcon " for " our Lord the
King." This was Henry III., and probably none of the grants
are later than the thirteenth century. One Petit Serjeanty
was held in Cumberland by keeping the King's aeries of
Goshawks (aerias austurcorum). A manor in Bucks was held
by the service of being Marshal of the King's Falcons and
other Hawks.
A manor in Notts was held by the service of carrying one
Gyr Falcon from the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel
until Lent. Another manor in Bucks was held by the service
of keeping one Falcon until it could fly, and for the keeping
of it, when he took it to the King, Reginald de Grey was to
have the King's horse, etc.
Lands were held in Northampton by the service
of finding dogs for the destruction of wolves, martens,
cats and other vermin. John de Bellovent was to have
fifty-six shillings and seven pence for maintaining seven
greyhounds, three Falcons, and a Lever [Lanner ?] hawk,
and for the wages of a huntsman. For the lordship of
Sheffield two white hares were to be rendered. Some
further information on this subject will be found in an
article by Mr. Harting, entitled " Of Hawks and Hounds
in Essex in the Olden Time."*
Falconry in Europe. — " On looking into the history
of Falconry in Europe," writes Mr. Harting, " one figure
of a great falconer in the Middle Ages stands out
prominently — namely, the Emperor Frederick II. of Germany,
who died in 1250. He had seen something of Hawking in
the East, and in 1239, on his return from a Crusade which
he had undertaken the year before, when he was crowned
King of Jerusalem and Sicily, he brought with him
* " The Essex Naturalist," 1889, Vol. III., p. 189
54 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
from Syria and Arabia several expert falconers with their
hawks.
In the Middle Ages the Germans were great falconers ;
so also were the French and the natives of Brabant, of whom
a celebrated Spanish falconer in 1325 wrote that they were
the best falconers in the world. To a less extent the art was
practised in Spain and Italy during many centuries."*
Wild-Fowl Decoys in England. — So far nothing has been
said about decoys, but they were already in use, with many
other clever devices for netting birds, which were mostly
superseded w r hen guns came to be employed. The word
decoy is one of antiquity, and is probably an abbreviation
of the Dutch words eende-kooi or coy (Middle Dutch loye),
that is a cage or trapping-place for Ducks, see Skeat's
"Etymological Dictionary" (1901). Eend or Eende, which
is Dutch for a duck, also comes very close to the Anglo-Saxon
word Ened. In the " Promptorium Parvulorum " (fifteenth
century) we find it spelled Ende, and the equivalent dooke
byrde — Duck bird.
The word enede is stated by the learned editor, Mr. Albert
Way, to occur in the glosses on Gautier de Bibelesworth :
" En marreis ane iaroille (enede queketh) "
" In marshes the Duck quacketh " ; and in another
passage :
" . . . . il ane (enede) et plounczoun (douke) "
" The Duck and the ? Grebe."
There can be no doubt that in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, and much later than that, Lincolnshire,
where so many decoys were afterwards constructed, was a
paradise for wild-fowl, though few of the early writers not
excepting even William Camden (1586) bear any testimony
to it. Here were situated Crowland, and its famous
monastery, a place so encompassed with deep bogs and
marshy pools that there was only access to it by two
narrow causeways, -f
* " Bibliotheca Aceipitraria," by J. E. Harting, Intro. XIII., XIV
f " Britannia," Vol. I., p. 553.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY 55
Doubtless the Abbot of Crowland, and his sixty-two or
more monks, were entirely dependent on the supply of fish
and wild- fowl, which were to them as cornfields.*
In a very interesting communication to the "Field" of
April 27th, 1878, on the subject of " Decoys Past and Present,"
Mr. J. Hoare states that decoys for catching Wild Ducks
" were common in England in the reign of King John [1199-
1216], when they were looked upon as an adjunct of the King's
forest, and as they appertained to the royal prerogative, no
one dare draw them without license. There were some
celebrated decoys in Holland and Kesteven in Lincolnshire,
which, being a subject of litigation about the year 1280, we
find the importance attached to them in those days duly set
forth in the Rolls of Parliament."
Mr. Hoare's researches show at what an early period these
decoys were commenced, yet they must not be under-
stood as having been decoys on the Dutch plan. The
system of enticing Ducks into a tunnel net (which gradually
curved and lessened in size) by means of a trained dog, which
curiosity prompted the birds to follow, was not introduced
until later. The operation in all probabihty consisted, as
Mr. T. Southwell supposed, f in the simpler but much less
efficacious plan of driving the Ducks into hoop nets and then
catching them by hand. There was another method of catching
the fowl, which was by the driving of " flappers " in July,
when no doubt a good many old Ducks with shed primaries
were caught too. It will always be with the eastern counties
that the early decoys are associated, and much of very great
interest might be written on this head.
Household Accounts, Feasts, and Prices. — Very few Privy-
purse or Household Accounts were kept in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries; in fact there were not many
* In Cordeaux's " Birds of the Humber " (p. 146) a quotation is given
from William of Malmesbury, who lived in the twelfth century, to the effect
that the Lincolnshire fens were so covered with Coots and Ducks, and the
flashes (pools) with Fowl, that in moulting time, when they could not fly, the
natives could take two or three thousand at a draught with their nets.
This passage, if it be Malmeshury's, which is very doubtful, is certainly
not in the " De Gestis Regum " (1125), nor in the " De Gestis Pontificum "
(1125), although in the latter work there is an allusion to young water-fowl
in the account of Thorney, which is in Lincolnshire, see note by Professor E.
Bensly in " Notes and Queries " (Sept. 23rd, 1916).
f "Norwich Nat. Tr.," II., p. 538.
56 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
educated enough to know how to write them. Whale and
porpoise were commonly eaten at feasts, and many birds.
In Lent, 1246, Henry III. ordered the Sheriffs of London
to purchase a hundred pieces of the best whale, and two
porpoises.* We learn from the " Rotulus Hospitii Comitissa?
Leicestriae " that two hundred pieces, or two cwt., of whale
were bought for the Countess of Leicester and the King of
the Romans, previously to Palm Sunday, 1265, besides which
grampus or porpoise and sea-wolves f are mentioned several
times in the Roll during Lent.J
For long after this the appearance of the porpoise in bills
of fare is frequent, and it was dressed in a variety of ways.
Sometimes it was prepared with a sauce made of fine bread-
crumbs, mixed with vinegar and sugar. On the occasion of
a City banquet, the porpoise was to be brought whole into
the banqueting hall, and then carved or "undertraunched "
by the officer in attendance. §
In 1251 Henry III. held a great feast at York, and
in the " Rotulos Familiae " of Edward I. there are items
of scullery expenditure as early as 1292. [| It cannot be said
that they convey much information, but they are perhaps the
earliest of the kind in which birds are noticed. Here we
learn that sevenpence was paid by the larderer for a Goose,
two shillings for six Geese, a penny for some corn for the
Geese, the same (?) for a Falcon, for a Hen, and for some
parsley. A wild buck cost eightpence, two sticks of eels were
elevenpence, and a lamprey a shilling.
The editor, the Rev. J. Brand, remarks that the items
of diet in the Roll evince how rigidly Lent was kept. Of the
shellfish and other fish mentioned, such as herrings, congers,
eels, pike, lampreys, gurnards, trout, whiting, plaice, salmon,
all except one (the lamprey) are eaten at the present day ;
yet one cannot help wondering how minnows (if by menums
these little fish are meant) could have obtained a place at the
royal board.
* " Manners and Household Expenses of England," 1841, p. xlii.
f Seals.
I T.c, p. xlii.
§ Bidwell, " Norwich Nat. Tr.," IV., p. 594.
|| " Arohaeologia," 1806, p. 362.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY 57
Mr. H. Saunders states that tame Swans are particularly
mentioned in England, in a manuscript of 1272,* which I have
not seen. The passage referred to, as I learn from Mr. Harting,
who was Saunders' informant, is to be found in the Wardrobe
Accounts of Edward I. published by " The Society of
Antiquaries." In 1275 a table of permitted poulterers' prices
was issued by order of Edward I. in which the Crane was pi iced
at three shillings, and the Bittern and Heron at sixpence, the
Teal (Cercel) at sixpence, and the Curlew at threepence. f In
the time of Edward I. oaths were sworn on the Swan, Peacock
and Pheasant, which were looked on in the light of royal birds.}
In 1289 we learn from the " Household Expenses of
Richard de Swinfield "§ that Pheasants were to be had in
the London market, which may have been tame bred ones ;
in any case it is certain that they could not have been common.
For this and other references of archaeological interest, I am
indebted to the Rev. T. S. Cogswell.
Heronries in Kent and Norfolk. — Turning now to another
subject, there is good reason for believing that some of our
British Heronries are exceedingly ancient, that is to say, that
though the birds may have changed from one wood to another
as trees died and fresh ones grew up, the same river valley
has from time immemorial held its heronry, or two heronries.
This appears to be the case in Kent, for, from an " Inquisition "
which Dr. N. F. Ticehurst has cited in his " Birds of Kent,"
(1909) we learn the undoubted fact of a heronry having
existed at Chilham, in that county, before 1280—93.
The same love of its old haunts is shown by the Heron
in the valley of the Yare and other rivers of Norfolk. Here,
* Yarrell, "B.B.," IV., p. 327.
t As quoted by Stow and Maitland from the " Statuta de Poletria."
| In 1306 Edward I. vowed upon the Swan that he would take vengeance
upon Robert Bruce, while in 1483 Philip, Duke of Burgundy, vowed on the
Pheasant to go to the deliverance of Constantinople. A correspondent of
" Notes and Queries " conjectures that the oath by the Peacock and that by
the Pheasant were one and the same (" N. &, Q.," 4th ser., III., p. 565). The
Peacock was evidently a fairly plentiful bird in the thirteenth century.
Among other entries which prove this, Mr. Cogswell draws attention to a
passage wherein five of these birds are stated to have been sent to Lopham
in Norfolk in 1277. just after Michaelmas, on the occasion of a visit from
Edward I. to the Pari of Norfolk (see " A Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565," by
F. G. Davenport, 1906).
5 Printed for the Camden Society, 1855 (p. 40).
58 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
judging from the Patent Rolls of Edward I. * there can be no
doubt of there having been heronries more than six hundred
years ago, that is to say a.d. 1300 or earlier. They had their
value, and it appears from this document that protection was
needed for them in certain parishes, viz.. Whinburgh, Cantley
on the Yare, and Wormegay on the Nar.f Moreover, these
parishes contained, if the preamble is to be taken literally,
eyries of Sparrow-hawks, Spoonbills and Bitterns, in addition
to the Herons.
Blackborough Nunnery. — Another Norfolk record, although
it does not touch Herons, to which Mr. J. C. Tingey has drawn
attention, is an entry of the twelfth or early thirteenth century,
in the unpublished Cartulary of Blackborough Nunnery,
near King's Lynn. In this William de Warren, who Mr.
Tingey has reason to believe died in 1208, the lord of Wirmegay
or Wormegay — the site of one of the heronries just mentioned
— concedes certain holdings. The concession is made for the
annual payment by Thnrchetel of Lynn of " duas curleus
vel hi] 01 ' aves vel octo cerceles vel viij hulvestres [silvestres,
i.e., wild-fowl]" in lieu of money. The "cerceles" were
probably Teal : the word is used in the same sense in the
Middleton accounts, to be quoted in the next chapter, and
has its equivalent in the French " Sarcelle." According to
Dugdale this Nunnery was entitled to an annual gift of four
hundred eels from the fishery of Emma de Bellofago at Wilton
(" Monasticon Anglicanum," IV., p. 204) ; perhaps it should
read " sticks of els," as four hundred would be a very small
number : a bundle of ten sticks was two hundred and fifty
eels.
The Monk of St. Albans. — It was injjthis century that
England was visited by flocks of Crossbills. This fact is
vouched for by the Monk of St. Albans, Matthew Paris, who
would have thought such a circumstance beneath his notice
if the birds had not attacked the apple orchards, which in
the thirteenth century had already assumed a considerable
importance in the western counties where cider was made.
* " Calendar of Patent Rolls," pp. 546 and 621. In the second passage
the names of the birds are erroneously entered as Herons, Bustards and
Buzzards, the right reading being heyronum, poplorum, (spoonbills) bittorum.
f Professor Newton, "Norwich Naturalists' Tr.," VI., p. 159.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY 59
The visits of the Crossbill to England have always been
somewhat mysterious and are not regulated by the laws
which govern the majority of migratory birds. Sometimes
for many years they are rare or altogether unseen, and then
comes a large invasion, which lasts or dies away, according
to the food supply to be found. Seeds of the Scotch fir are
their natural diet, but occasionally apples are attacked, chieliy
for the sake of the pip.
"In the course of this year" [1251], writes the chronicler,
" about the fruit-season there appeared, in the orchards
chiefly, some remarkable birds which had never before been
seen in England, somewhat larger than Larks, which ate the
kernel of the fruit and nothing else, whereby the trees were
fruitless, to the loss of many. The beaks of these birds were
crossed. . . ." The original manuscript, which contains a rude
drawing of the Crossbill, was examined by Professor Newton
at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where it is preserved.
Matthew Paris was not a naturalist, but incidentally he
gives us three or four other items of zoology of about this date
— Woods were to be kept free from wolves, which were far
from being extinct in England — Buffaloes (?)were brought to
England in 1252 — a Sea-Monster, not of the Whale kind, was
washed up in the diocese of Norwich in 1255 — in the same
year the first Elephant was brought to England, having been
presented to Henry III. by Lewis, King of France. About
the same time also the King had a White Bear sent him from
Norway.
Other marvels of the thirteenth century were hailstones
" as gret as an ey "* which fell in 1203, in which year were
also seen fowls flying in the air, bringing in their bills burning
coals, which burned many houses in London.f This story
possibly has its origin in the mischievous habits of the
Jackdaw.
The Solan Goose. Translation of an Extent or Inventory
of Produce in the Reign of Edward I. (1274).— Turning now
to the Solan Goose, it is to Sir T. Duff us Hardy that we are
indebted for disinterring a thirteenth-century record of a
* Professor Bensly, to whose assistance I am ranch indebted, suggests
that " ey " should read " egg."
f " A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483," p. 5.
60 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
breeding-place at Lundy Island, off the north coast of Devon.*
In 1274 certain appointed Jurors (whose names are given)
reported to the Crown, to whom Lundy Island belonged,
that : " There may be there twenty acres of arable land, which
may be sown with barley or oats. . . . Also the taking of
rabbits isestimated at 2000, worth £5 10s. and the estimate is at
5s. 6d. each hundred skins, because the flesh is not sold. Also
the rock of gannets [petra ganetorum] is worth 5s. ; there are
other birds, but they are not sold. There is also one eyrie of
lanner falcons [Falco peregrmus]^ which have sometimes three
young ones, sometimes four, sometimes more, and sometimes
less. This eyrie the jury knew not how to estimate, and they
build their nests in a place in which they cannot be taken."
A perusal of this document leads us to infer that the
Lundy Gannets — the occupants of the " petra ganetorum,"
doubtless the isolated rock which is to be seen at the north-
east end of the island — were not very numerous. If they
had been, their value would surely have been reckoned as
greater than a hundred rabbit-skins. Evidently the " lanner
falcons," although building in almost inaccessible cliffs, were
highly esteemed.
* "Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica," Vol. IV. (1837). pp.
313—330. It is also printed, with slight alterations, in the "Calendar ot
Inquisitions preserved in the Public Record Office" (1916, Vol. I., p. 298).
f The words are : Una ayeria falconurn lanerium. The falcons from this
eyrie had been already bestowed in 1243 by Henry III. " dilecto clerico suo
Ade de Eston " ("Close Rolls,'' 1242-1247, p. 95). Modern falconers have
considered Lundy Peregrines to be of the best, cf. " Birds of Devon," 1892
p. 161.
Chapter VI.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
The Fourteenth Century: Ltmdy Island, North Devon. Ranulph Higden
Household Accounts. Geoffrey Chaucer
Lundy Island. — Reverting again to Lundy Island and
the Solan Geese, we learn from Sir T. Duffus Hardy's
investigations that in 1321, during the reign of Edward II.,
a second " Inquisition " into the products of the island
was ordered.
Translation of the Second " Extent " of Lundy made in the
Reign of Edward II., 1321.—" Sir John [de Wyllynton] held
the island of Lunday. . . . There is also a rabbit warren
worth in ordinary years 100s. but this year destroyed in great
part by the men of John de WyUyngton and the Scots. Also a
certain rock, called the Gannets' stone, with two places near
it where the Gannets settle and breed, worth in ordinary years
66s. 8d. but this year destroyed in part by the Scots. Also
eight tenants who hold their land and tenements by a certain
charter of Herbert de Mareis, granted to them for the term of
their lives, who pay 15s. yearly. Also one tenant who should
keep the said gannets during tie whole season of their breeding
[aereacionis] thereon, for which service he will be quit of his
rent of 2s."
Here it is clearly implied that the Gannets bred in three
places, and it is also evident that, in the forty-seven years since
the previous " extent " was made, their value had increased,
for they are valued at 66s. and 8d. instead of at 5s., and have
a special guardian appointed to protect them.
In 1325 or 1326, some twelve months before he
was brutally murdered, Edward II., in order to avoid
his rebellious barons, thought to take refuge on Lundy
Island, and with a view to the King's coming there a
62 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
third " extent " was made, which mentions Gannets among
the products of the island.
Stow's Translation of the Third " Extent " of Lundy. —
" The Isle of Lundy, which is in the mouth of the river
Severne, two miles in length every way, abounding with
pasture grounds, and oats, very pleasant. It bringeth forth
Conies very plentifully, it hath Pigeons, and other foules,
which Alexander Necham calls Ganimedes Birdes, having
great nests. Also it minestreth to the inhabitants fresh
springing waters. ..."
The " Ganimedes Birdes " were Solan Geese. It is a play
on the word Gannet, referring to Ganymedes, son of Tros, who
was carried off by one of Jove's eagles. The Necham here
alluded to was Abbot of Cirencester and a somewhat prolific
writer. Here it may be remarked that the antiquary John
Leland mentions Lundy Island twice in his " Itinerary "*
and again once in the " Collectanea," but unfortunately in
neither case is there any allusion to its birds.
The Puffin in 1337. — In these extracts the Puffin is not
alluded to by name, although it must have been abundant,
for the island of Lundy is supposed to take its name from
Lunde, a Puffin. This is the Norwegian and Icelandic name
for it, which has not, with this exception, found its Avay to
England, where we call the bird a Puffin from its puffed-out
appearance, t
It is a species which rejoices in a good many appellations,
some of which, from the rounded shape of its beak, compare
it to a Parrot. Assuredly one might have expected some
mention of Puffins on Lundy Island, as well as of the Gannets,
in these early documents, for Puffins have always been con-
sidered fit for food, which was never the case with the
Guillemot. The Church of Rome, by a stretch of conscience,
allowed Puffins to pass as fish during the fast, and it was this
concession which has led to their finding a place in several
manuscripts of a slightly later date.
Of these mentions the earliest seems to be in 1337
(Inquisitions P.M. IX. 100, 22 Edward III.). In 1337 the
possession of the Scilly Islands (caption of Seisin), another
* Vol. III., p. 113 and Vol. V., p. 76.
j Prof. W. Skeat.
64 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
place where these birds have always bred in great numbers,
and where there are still thousands, as I can testify, was
leased by the King, as Earl of Cornwall, to the Abbot Ranulphus
of Blancminster for half a mark (=six and eightpence), or
" c c c poffouns." No doubt they were intended for eating,
and Professor Newton thinks they may have been young
ones dried or salted.*
A rent of half a mark seems little more than nominal,
but it was no doubt meant to fix the Earl of Cornwall's
seigniory. Besides this record of Puffins at Scilly in 1337,
there are one or two incidental allusions to them, in 1366 and
1367, as among the assets in Ministers' accounts. These
latter, which are among the treasures of the Public Record
Office, are cited in the " New English Dictionary."
Ignorance of Bird-life. — From a naturalist's point of view,
the fourteenth century is chiefly remarkable for our extreme
ignorance of the conditions of birddife which then pre-
vailed in the British Isles. Nor do we apparently know
much of the ornithology of any part of Europe at this
time, a circumstance which is to be regretted, but there is
no help for it. There is the one exception of Falconry,
a subject to which there are many references, this sport
continuing as popular as ever, and, being the favourite
jjastime of princes and nobles, it continually comes into
the MSS. of the time. When our Edward III. invaded
France, in 1339, he took care that these insignia of royalty
should not be wanting, having with him, as Jehan
Froissart relates, thirty falconers. " Le Roi," says the old
chronicler : " avoit bien, pour lui, trente fauconiers a cheval,
charges d'oiseaux, & bien soixante couples de forts chiens, &
autant de levriers : " (Vol. I., chap, ccx., p. 24-0).
Yet we can hardly suppose that the rigours of Avar would
have allowed him much time for hawking, or for coursing.
It was in the reign of this king that an incident took place
which shows the estimation in which a trained falcon was
held, and not by the laity only. The Bishop of Ely attended
the service of the church at Bermondsey, Southwark, leaving
his hawk in the cloister, which in the meantime was stolen,
whereupon the Bishop, discovering his loss, promptly pro-
* " Dictionary of Birds," p. 751.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY 65
nounced excommunication on the thieves who had taken it.
" Persons of high rank," says Strutt, who so well describes
the manners of this period, " rarely appeared without their
dogs and their hawks ; the latter they carried with them when
they journeyed from one country to another, and sometimes
even when they went to battle, and would not part with them
to procure their own liberty, when taken prisoners. These
birds were considered as ensigns of nobility, and no action
could be reckoned more dishonourable to a man of rank than
to give up his hawk."* But other birds besides hawks appear
to have been frequently kept, not for the sake of sport, nor
for beauty of plumage, but as watch-guards, or in some cases
for eating. We are told that two favourite birds in English
baronial mansions were the imported Parrot, and the Ma'gpie,
the former for its drollery, while the Magpie had a place in the
poultry yard, because from its watchfulness against depredators
and the noise it made on the approach of fowl-stealers, it
was considered a useful safeguard. It was a time when the
middle classes were making some considerable advance both
in independence and wealth, and when consequently we may
suppose they had more leisure for the animals which lived
around them ; but, if they had, they have left us few records,
except as to falconry and trifling details of their housekeeping.
This may be in part due to a certain degree of stagnation
which overspread the . land, following upon the depopulation
of counties which took place in 131=8-9.
Animals Destroyed by Plague. — These were the years
of the Great Plague, which ravaged not England only but a
great part of Europe. So virulent was the epidemic that
even animals, such as dogs and cats, perished in the infected
houses, and cocks and hens also died.f In one pasture
there lay five thousand sheep, and they were so putrid that
neither beast nor bird would touch them. J
Professor Rogers speaks of the great change which is
known to have taken place in the relations of labour and
capital from this cause. Meanwhile, minor matters had to be
content with a place in the background, and agriculture, for
* '■ Sports and Pastimes," p. 18.
f Baluze, " VitEe Paparum."
| Roger Twysden, "Hist. Angl. Script."
F
66
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
want of labour, must have suffered severely. But although
the poor suffered, the pursuits of royalty were not to be aban-
doned. In Thomas Rymer's " Foedera," there is a tract entitled
" De Pardonatione Venationis " in which the author enumerates
a list of the animals killed in 1356 by one of the Kings of
Scotland.* No birds are named, but of fish the King got
ninety-five pike, a hundred and nine perch and six bream, as
well as roach, tench and chub. Fresh-water fish, pike more
particularly, were always held to be an important article of
food, trout were in less demand, but the larger salmon
were appreciated. Before alluding again to Lundy and its
Solans, it is desirable, in order to preserve a chronological
HARROWING, c. A.D. 1340.
LontreU Psalter.
sequence, that some reference should be made to Lord Middle-
ton's manuscripts, which are preserved at WoUaton Hall,
Notts. t In the large selection printed by the Historical
MSS. Commission there are only a few brief references to birds
in the fourteenth century, but these few extend as far back
as 1304^5. They make mention of fowls bought for the
Falcons, which were no doubt an important part of the estab-
lishment, also pork for them. They also mention Wild Geese,
Wild and tame Ducks, Teal (cercell), Plovers and small birds,
which wore purchases made for the kitchen. At that early
date it was not the custom to keep elaborate accounts, or if
it were, they have been lost.
* " Foedera, Conventiones, Literae," edn. 1708, Tom. V., p. 870.
\ For references to which I am indebted to the Rev. T. S. Cogswell, and
have since inspected some of them.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY 67
Banulph Higden. — Next in order of date come Higden's
notes, chronicled some time between 1330 and 1360. A Chester
Benedictine, Ranulph Higden, has bequeathed a good deal
about Irish birds in what is known as the " Polychronicon,"
but he was an extensive borrower from Giraldus. Describing
the natural productions of Ireland, Higden (translation in
Rolls series) says — " That londe is more habudaunte in
kye [kine] than in oxen, in pasture than in corne. Neverthe-
less, hit habundethe in salmones, eles, lawmpreis, and in other
fysche of the see ; in egles, cranes, pokokkes [? capercaillie],
curlewes [?], sparrehowke, ffawken [Falcons] and gentille
gossehawke ; hauenge wulphes [wolves] and moste nyous myse
[noxious mice] and weselles lytelle in body, but bolde in herte.
Also there be bryddes which thei calle bernacles, lyke to
wylde gese, whom nature producethe ageyne nature from
firre trees. . ."
Further on, taking his cue from Giraldus, Higden says,
as if the remark was original, that Ireland does not possess
" a kynde of hawkes that be callede lanerettes and grete-
fawkones [gyro falcones], partricehe and fesaunte, pyes,
nyghtegales, bucke and doo, wontes [moles] and other bestes
of venom." This last fortunate immunity, he goes on to say,
is attributed by some men to the prayers of St. Patrick.
The absence of the Magpie — at the present day a bird
so common in Ireland — is remarkable, but on this subject see
a paper by the late Mr. G. E. Barrett-Hamilton in the
" Zoologist,"* where a great deal of evidence about the
former status of this species is adduced.
Both Giraldus and Higden include " Pavones " among
the birds of Ireland, and, although the evidence of the latter
counts for nothing, this is generally accepted as meaning the
Capercaillie, an opinion in which Mr. J. F. Dimock, who edited
Giraldus' Chronicle, shared. f Giraldus' words are: "Pavones
silvestres hie abundant." Higden says ; " Abundat . . .
pavonibus, coturnicibus, niso, falcone et accipitre generoso."
It is possible that both authors meant not the Capercaillie
but the Peacock ; yet the expression Wood Peacock implies a
wild haunter of the forest. When the Capercaillie became
* "Zool.," 1891, p. 247.
f Edition of 1867.
68 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
extinct in Ireland is not certainly known, but it seems from
Ware's " History and Antiquities of Ireland " that there were
none left when Harris's edition of that work was published in
1764 (see Vol. II., p. 172), in spite of what Thomas Pennant-
says to the contrary.
It may be that in the fourteenth century this fine bird
was an inhabitant of Ireland, as well as of the tracts of
forests in Gallowedia, Argyle and Scotia. On this subject
see Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown's monograph on " The Caper-
caillie in Scotland" (1879), where matter relevant to the
question is brought together.
Mr. J. E. Harting, in a review of Mr. Harvie-
Brown's labours in the " Zoologist,"* further mentions
fourteenth-century grants of land in Durham (circa 134—361)
held by the tenure of paying " one wode-henne." But
the question is, were these Wood Hens Capercaillie or
Black Grouse ?
Household Accounts in the Fourteenth Century. — Mr.
Harting, who has dug more deeply than most into the
annals of the past, quotes a ease of several persons
being fined in May, 1318, at a Court Baron of the
Bishop of Ely, for collecting Bitterns' eggs (ova botorum).-\
The Bittern was a regular inhabitant of the Fen country,
and in many places, owing to the absence of trees, it may
have been a more plentiful species than the Heron. J It
must have been in considerable favour for the table, for
Bitterns are named in nearly every Dietary. They were
perhaps less fishy than Herons, but both were in request ;
the former were recommended to be eaten with no sauce,
but only with salt.§
Of Household Accounts and Charges at Feasts there are
but few. Mr. Harting has given extracts from a dinner at
* 1879, p. 4G8.
f " Handbook of British Birds," Revised edition, p. 217.
{ The Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain, to whose assistance lam greatly indebted,
thinks this does not follow, for the Heron will breed on the ground in the
absence of trees. In Holland Mr. Jourdain has found their nests among reeds
in shallow water, and at Aqualate, in Staffordshire, a few nests have been
found in reeds, although there are large trees at hand. The Heron, in Mr.
Jourdain's experience, is commoner in Holland, even where trees are absent,
than the Bittern.
§ "Norwich Nat. Tr.," IV., p. 592.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY
69
Oxford in 1395,* which seems to have been an ornithological
occasion. - )"
Attention has been drawn by Mr. Walter Rye to the
"Deeds and Records of the Borough of King's Lynn"
(1874), by H. Harrod, wherein are quoted three entries from
the Chamberlain's Rolls, of Bustards and Herons provided
for corporation dinners in 1338, 1370 and 1401. J
But Mr. Rye has also pointed out that in the eleventh
Report of the Historical Manuscripts Comniission§ the
second of these entries is rendered " botores [bitterns], herouns
et avenis [oats]," which an examination of the original passage
by Mr. E. M. Beloe confirms. There can, therefore, be little
doubt that, in the other two entries also, the correct reading
should be Bitterns, and not Bustards.
Prices of Provisions. — The following prices of provisions
are given by Joseph Strutt as current in this century. || No
poulterer to charge more than : —
For a Swan
„ „Teal ...
„ ,, river Mallard
„ „ fen Mallard
„ „ Snipe ...
,, 4 Larks ...
,, a Woodcock
,, „ Partridge
sh. d.
4
2
5
.'!
1
1
3
5
* " Zoologist," 1879, p. 337. Some doubt has arisen as to the meaning
hereof the word " upupa," which, translated literally, would lie a Hoopoe, in
the passage : " Et in vij upupis emptis pretium capitis ij d. xiiij d," but
probably, as suggested by my father ("Zool.," 1879, p. 379), the birds really
were Lapwings. On the spelling of Hoopoe, see Swann's "English and
Folk names of British Birds," p. 125.
The whole passage is printed under the heading of " Empcio poltriae,
et volatilium " in Professor Rogers' most useful " Agriculture and Prices
in England" (1866, ii.,p. 644).
f There exists a Roll of Ancient Cookery, " The Forme of Cury,'
compiled in this century (but not printed until 1780) which gives many curious
recipes. _
t Pp. 74, 80, 84.
§ 1887, part iii., p. 220.
|| "Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits, etc." (1776), Vol. III., p. 113.
Reign of Edward III., E. Libro MS. in Bib. R. B. Cotton. The difference
in the value of the shilling between then and now has to be remembered.
70
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
sh.
d.
3
1
4
10
6
1*
For a Plover ...
,, ,, Pheasant
„ ,, Curlew ...
„ 13 Thrushes
„ 13 Small birds
Mute Swans must have been appreciated in Edward IIL'e
reign to be priced so highly ; on the other hand, Teal and
Snipe do not seem to have been thought much of. In 1357
Edward III. was moved to concede to private persons a
grant of all unmarked Swans — that is, cygnets which could
not be caught — on the Thames between Oxford and London
for seven years, while in 1393 his successor on the throne
made a similar concession in respect of rivers in the County
of Cambridge. This alone proves the value which was placed
upon these large birds.
* The price of Fish in Norfolk. — Mr. Hamon le Strange has obliged me
with the following prices of fish, extracted from the Household Accounts of
the le Straunges of Hunstanton Hall, in Norfolk, from 1340 to 1346.
Anguillse (Eels) of store.
Grindling or Grinling (Qy. Groundling).
Oheling (Cod) to the value of a few pence.
Doggedrove (Dogfish) 100 bought for 40s.
Haddock one penny.
Hanon (Qy. Whiting) one halfpenny or one farthing.
Herring White or fresh 1
Salt {
Lucea (Pike)
Ling.
Makerell
Mulvell (Qy. Mullet; cf. Higden's
" Polychronicon," t.c, p, 423)
Playce
200 cost lOd.
one farthing.
2d., but number not given.
Porpoise
Salmon
Sole
Stookfish
Sprotts (Sprats).
Trotta (Trout)
Turbut.
Verdiyng (unidentified)
Crabbys
Cravose (Lobster)
Muscula (Mussel)
Ostrea (Oyster)
Welks
one penny.
from ^d. to 2£d.
twenty pence.
1 Jd., weight not stated.
twopence, number not given.
sixty cost 2/2.
one halfpenny.
to the value of a farthing.
two cost three halfpence.
to the value of a farthing.
,, penny.
„ xixd.
Birds, with the exception of tho Mallard, hardly come into these accounts,
Mr. le Strange finds the price of a Goose was threepence, of a Mallard or a
Capon twopence, of a Hen three halfpence.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY
71
A little later (circa 1384) when Richard II. had come to the
throne, it appears from the " Liber Albus "* an emended list
of prices was issued, for the control of poulterers, in which
cygnets rank at a much lower figure : —
A best cygnet was to be
purcel (little pig) was to be
teal
river mallard
snipe
woodcock
partridge
plover
pheasant
curlew
bittern
heron
brewe (? whimbrel)
Four larks
Twelve thrushes
„ finches
fourpence
six ,,
two ,,
three „
one penny
threepence
four ,,
three
twelve
six
eighteen
sixteen
eighteen
one penny
sixpence
one penny
MASKING THE BEAK AND FEET OF A SWAN.
These prices were assessed by the Mayor, and proclaimed
from time to time to the people, who were informed that any
person selling unsound birds was liable to be set on the pillory.
This is also a memorable century as marking the gradual
rise of letters, and especially as being the period in which
* "The White Book of the City of London, compiled a.d. 141 0,"
translate 1 by li. T. Riley, 1861, p. 401.
72 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Geoffrey Chaucer the poet flourished, who, like the observant
Shakespeare, evidently had a fondness for animals. In
" The Assemble of Fowls " (or " Parlement of Briddis "),
where an Eagle, being beloved of three Tercels, makes
her choice upon trial, we meet with no less than thirty-
six kinds of birds, amongst which are the Merhon. Kite,
Sparow, Ruddocke [Robin], Swallowe, Feldefare, StarJing,
( 'hough, Popingeie [Green Woodpecker], Lapwing, Storke and
Cormeraunt. The epithets employed by Chaucer are shrewdly
characteristic of the habits of the birds. Thus the Fieldfare,
in allusion to its being a winter visitant, is described as frosty,
the Cormorant full of gluttony, the Goose wakeful, the Heron
the eel's foe, the Turtle Dove is wedded, and the Chough a
thief, while the false Lapwing is full of treachery. Chaucer's
Tercels are meant to be male Eagles, but this is a very unusual
use of the term, which, spelled in many ways, has been always
applied to a male Hawk of some kind. In modern falconry
Tiercel (the derivation of which is uncertain) is restricted to
the male of the Peregrine Falcon, which in Shakespeare's day
was termed a Tercel-gentle to distinguish it from a Goshawk.*
The Peregrine Falcon figures in " The Squire's Tale "
(Part II., line 448), but is not named by Chaucer in " The
Assemble of Fowls."
The Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 53.
Chapter VII.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Tlie Fifteenth Century : Sir Richard Holland. Decoys. William Botoner.
Birds in the Fifteenth Century. Feasting in the Fifteenth Century.
Nevile and Warham.
Most of the old English poets show themselves to be
fond of nature by their allusions to the names and habits
of animals. Chaucer's frequent mentions of birds are very
apposite, and in this century we have Sir Richard Holland.
In Holland's poem of " The Howlat " {i.e., Owlor Owlet),
supposed to have been written in 1453, several birds are
introduced by name — as the Solan Goose (spelled Soland), the
Bittern (spelled Baytown), the Stork, the Starling, the Corn-
crake, the Gowk (Cuckoo), the Tuquheit (Lapwing), and the
Swallow. This curious old allegory was intended to be a satire
on James II. of Scotland, whose face was somewhat deformed
and who is here likened to an Owl. It is a literary curiosity,
not without some meaning for the naturalist. The names in
" The Howlat " may be compared with somewhat similar ones
in " Nomina avium fferorum," part of a Pictorial Vocabulary
of about this date, published by Mr. T. Wright.* Here we
meet with a few specimens of phonetic spelling past puzzling
out, but the following birds' names are intelligible : —
A rodok (ruddock=Redbreast).
A donek (dunnock=Hedge Accentor).
A potok (puttock^Kite).
A mawys (mavis=Thrush).
A schevelard (shovelard=Spoonbill).
A thyrstyllecok (throstle-cook=Mistle Thrush).
A wodake (wood-hack= Woodpecker).
A howylle (Owl).
A roke (Rook).
A rewyn (Raven).
A cote (? Coot).
A wagstyrt (Wagtail).
A schryche (Shrike or Screech-Owl).t
* " Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies," 1884, ed. Wiileker, I.,
p. 761.
f J. E. Harting.
74 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Another and shorter list in the same vocabulary is entitled
" Nomina avium domesticarum," and in this we find the
stokdowe (Stockdove), and the names of Hawks used in
falconry. These lists have their value in a century where
there is so much dearth of exact information.
It still seems best to adhere to a chronological order
rather than attempt an arrangement of these early records
under subjects. Although this method has a tendency to
result in a string of more or less unconnected quotations, it
best displays what can be said of the early history of
ornithology in the British Isles. Readers will, I think, admit
that the alternative plan, namely, that of grouping the matter
to hand under the names of species, or under subjects, such
as Feasts, Household Accounts, Hawking, etc., is outweighed
by the chronological method. The student of natural
history in investigating this period cannot but heave a sigh
at the lack of available information. As in the fourteenth
century, so now, the notices of birds are singularly few and
far between, and what we do get are imperfect, and of a
very fragmentary character. Guns were practically unknown
things in the fifteenth century, but, in default, the fowler
knew how to use the net and the crossbow with a dexterity
which would nowadays astonish us. Decoys as a means of
taking Wild Ducks, which visited England five hundred years
ago in far greater numbers than they do now, had come
into use, but were possibly confined to the eastern counties.
In his account of " Decoys Past and Present " before alluded
to, Mr. J. Hoare informs us that the old Deeping Decoy
at Croyland (or Growland), in South Lincolnshire, was a sub-
ject of dispute between the Lord of Liddel and the monastery
in 1455. Also that on May 12th, 1432, a mob came armed with
swords, sticks, bows and arrows, and took six hundred wild
Geese (anches, query cmcie) out of the Abbot's decoy and did
other damage to the amount of £100. The amount of wild-
fowl taken in the East Anglian decoys must have been
very large, if it is to be judged by more recent statistics,
when the marshes had become less. They were probably
not worked with a dog, but were what are described in
Payne-Gallwey's " Book of Duck Decoys" (1886, p. 195) as
Trap decoys, with doors at the end of the pipes which could
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
75
be lowered with a wire from some concealed hut. In this case
the arbitrary regulations imposed by one of the great abbeys
had become too onerous to be borne, and the peasantry rose
in revolt and slew the Abbot's wild-fowl, either when they
were too young to fly, or when they were moulting. A special
EDINBURGH
jury was summoned the fo ho wing year, and the sheriff had
orders to fine the delinquents.
Solan Geese at the Bass Rock. — The earliest intimation
which we have of Solan Geese at the Bass Rock in Scotland
is contained in the still preserved " Codex " of the Cistercian
Abbey of Cupar. This Codex is considered to have been
written about 1447 by Walter Bower, the Abbot of Inchcolm,
an island in the Firth of Forth.
70
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
The passage about Solan Geese, tantalising in its brevity,
for it merely tells us that Solan Geese breed there in great
abundance, is as follows : —
" Insula de Bass, ubi solendas nidificant in magna copia :
cujus protector exstat Sanctus Baldredus, Sancti Kentigerni
olim suffraganus ; qui earn ab insultu mirifice protegit
Aiiglicorum."
Gannet Rock
OulJand Rock
'a farmer j->?
breeding r- ■ r \\
""'"{
DEVONSHIRE
O R N
We hear no more of them after that until 1493, and then
only indirectly as wild-birds, or wild-fowl producing grease,
which had a great value in the eyes of the Prioress of North
Berwick, who was so wronged about the Gannets by one
Robert Lauder that she applied to the Pope.
William Botover. Solan Geese at Pentybers. — It seems
probable that there was a small Gannctry at this time on the
north coast of Cornwall, if the " Itinerarium " of William
FIFTEENTH CENTURY 77
Botoner is to be credited.* In August 1478, Botoner \isited
several islands, of one of which he writes : " Pentybers rock,
a very great crag, situated on the western side of the Severn
water, four miles distant from the harbour of Padstow, and
the castle of Tintagel, and one mile from the shore,
and there nest birds called ganets, gulls, sea-mews, and
other sea birds" (Translation).
Although there is no evidence of a change of name, and
the words " very great crag " are hardly applicable, it seems
almost certain that this Pentybers can be none other than a
rock which now goes by the name of Gulland, which lies at
no great distance from Pentyr Point. In both cases the
meaning of " Pen " is a head or headland. Botoner has not
much to say of animal life on other islands, but he alludes
to the Puffins at Scilly, where they seem to have been an
article of food ; to the snakes on Priestholm in North Wales ;
and to Cormorants and Seamews on " Lastydenale in Wallia."
Mr. 0. V. Aplin, in writing of Botonerf has identified this
last named with St. Tudwal's Island on the Carnarvon coast,
and no doubt rightly.
British Birds in the Fifteenth Century. — Leaving poets
and Solan Geese for the present, let us see what there is
available, which is bevond mere conjecture, about British
birds generally, to which we can turn for information. As a
matter of fact there is very little ; it would be much easier to
collect information about the sixteenth century than about
the fifteenth, where only some scattered items bearing directly
on Natural History are discoverable. What there is, has been
to some extent sifted by Mr. W. Denton in his " England
in the Fifteenth Century," where this author cites various
curious passages, one of which referring to some old Trevelyan
Papers J may be worth quoting as a fair sample of the times.
In 1532 a certain tenant of Nettlecomb in Somerset was
indicted by one John Trevelyan for sundry infractions of his
covenant in respect of the holding of the estate and
manor : several things were alleged against him, viz., that he
* " Itiaerarium sive Liber Rerum Memorabilium." In another place
Botoner alludes to the island of Grasholm, but says nothing about any
Gannets beina; there.
f "Zoologist," 1915, p. 68.
t Which have been printed for the Camden Society (1857).
78 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
and " hys folkes " killed the swine [perhaps semi-wild ones]
and kept greyhounds which hunted the deer, also "he and
hys company kylled sum by nyght," — made " harepypes "
[snares] and destroyed conies, — had young herons out of
their nests, — set up " a rode nette " in the woods to take
woodcocks, — stole " coulvers " [pigeons] out of the barn, —
" fyssyd " in the park — and went " by nyght a byrdbattyn
[bird-catching] dyvers tymes," — all of which acts were
contrary to privilege.
The allusion here is to tame Pigeons in a barn, but they
were more generally kept in substantial brick towers. Fowls
were also largely bred at farms and homesteads, and not
always for their owners, as many went to supply the religious
houses, which were by no means entirely dependent upon
eels and pike ! Mr. Denton observes that among other
services, the cotter had to render poultry, when the lord's
table or the lord's falcons required them, but in that case they
were supplied as part of the tenant's rent. Occasionally in
household accounts we come across such an entry as " In
X. gallinis pro falconibus emptis, xvd.," or "in gallina empta
pro falcon Domini Ricardi,"* The guardian of a large rabbit
warren was an important man, and like gamekeepers of the
present day, he did not forget to have a " gallows-tree " for
vermin. Such an one was James Radcliff of Byllinforth
[Billingford near Dereham] in 1490 or thereabouts, who was
in the habit of suspending all " mysdoers and forf ay tours
[offenders] as wesellis, lobsters [stoats] polkattys, bosartys
[buzzards] and mayne currys [great curs]," and no doubt
any large hawks or Owls.f In the fifteenth century,
as now, severe winters from time to time decimated the
smaller birds by starving them, of which an instance, from
the " Chronicon Anglian " of Thomas Walsingham, which refers
to 1408, is quoted by the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain in " British
Birds. "J Doubtless the oversea migration w r ent on in the
east of England in much the same way as described by Sir
Thomas Browne two hundred years later (about 1662), and
in fact as it does now. But were there then the hundreds
* " Manuscripts of Lord Middleton," pp, 32+, 326.
■f See. " Norwich Naturalists' Trans.," V., p. 523.
+ Vol. XI., p. 267.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY 7i>
of thousands of Rooks, Starlings and Skylarks that there
are at the present day ? This is greatly to be doubted,
indeed it is improbable, considering the changed condi-
tions of the country : some species which are now very
plentiful may then have been very scarce. Throughout
England there must have been a considerable difference
among the resident birds. In the county of Norfolk alone
at least thirteen sorts of birds could be named which have
now ceased to nest there, all of them species which there
is every reason to assert bred and were unmolested in the
fifteenth century. It may well be that the number is far
more than thirteen. Five hundred years ago the agricultural
conditions so favourable for the Chaffinch did not exist ;
trimmed Thorns and Privet hedges, dear to the Greenfinch
and the Linnet, were few and far between. Some few Box
bushes for the Bullfinch to nest in were to be found, but,
assuredly, congenial ricks and stack-yards for the House
Sparrow were not so plentiful as they are now, while in those
remote times there would have been no Laurel shrubberies-
for the Thrush and no large planted fruit-gardens for the
Blackbird. The Bunting and the sprightly Yellow Hammer
would have had less grain to live upon than now ; but, on the
other hand, the handsome Reed Bunting, with the greater
extent of marsh, might have been more plentiful than it
is. The confiding Robin, so long known by its Saxon
appellation of ruddock, which is still the surname of some
families, would hardly have been at every humble door, as
nowadays. It is likely, although incapable of proof, that
Swallows and Martins were far less abundant then than at
the present day, for in Great Britain they appear to have
thriven with house-building. The multiplication of nesting
sites tends to increase a species, just as docs the tilling of
land favourably affect those game birds which seek their food
upon its surface. The Jackdaw, perhaps less common than
at the present day, appears to have been none the less trouble-
some.—" Pro exclusione nodularum ab ecclesia " we read in
1410 in the ancient account-rolls of the Abbey of Durham.*
They often found their way into churches and cathedrals,
which led to such entries as the above. Small birds were not.
* Publications of the Surtees Society," Vol. C. (1899).
80 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
considered friends by tillers of the soil in England, and it was
the custom for boys to be sent into the fields with bows and
arrows, which with the help of shouting, were expected to scare
all such thieves away. Then, as now, the parasitical House
Sparrow, whether a native or not, knew well how to thrive
upon man's labour. No one can prove from where the Sparrow
originally sprung, but a robber of grain it has been from the
earliest times, and in proof of this indictment may be cited
an illustration in the " Hortus Sanitatis." This " Hortus,"
which was a medical treatise of the fifteenth century (printed
1485 and 1491) sometimes with coloured pictures, depicts four
Sparrows attacking a field of ripe corn, probably real Sparrows,
but it has to be remembered that the term was used in a
generic sense. Another very quaint delineation of street fife
occurs in the later editions of " Hortus," in which Kites and
other birds form a prominent feature. One of the Kites is
sitting on a man's head, a plain testimony to the tameness of
these privileged city cleaners. Everywhere they were tolerated,
and especially in hot countries, because of their utility in
clearing up garbage, and animal matter which would infallibly
spread disease, if left to rot. In England, where they had not
lost their Anglo-Saxon name of Glead — (glida or cyta from
their gliding flight), they must have been quite common, and
very serviceable, in spite of eating a few young fowls at times.
In the same picture are to be seen Storks attending to
their nests on chimneys. The Stork appears never to have
been an English bird, yet it once bred in Scotland, as Dr. Eagle
Clarke has pointed out ; this was in 1416, when a pair nested
on the top of St. Giles's Church, in the heart of Edinburgh,
according to the old chronicler Bower.*
On the other hand, granivorous birds would have been
less plentiful. Partridges, though commonly eaten, and
Pheasants also, as bills of fare testify, would have been few
compared with the multitudes of to-day. Yet the Pheasant
seems to have been common in Ireland, and Professor Newton
states, on the authority of Nicholas Upton (whose work was
written in the fifteenth century and to whom we owe the first
mention of Choughs in Cornwall), that Pheasants were occasion-
ally reared and fattened in England, which indicates that they
* Abbot Bower, see " Scottish Naturalist," 1919, p. 25.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY 81
were birds of the aviary as well as found wild. This rearing
by hand was regularly practised at a somewhat later date, and
in the reign of Henry VIII. would seem to have been a custom-
ary proceeding. We know that this King's servants of whom
one at least was French, reared Pheasants, at the King's
country palace at Eltham in Kent, keeping them in aviaries
until they were wanted for eating. In a very entertaining
volume, entitled " The Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry
the Eighth,"* Sir N. H. Nicolas quotes many entries about
them. Here we twice read of as much as two crowns, which
would be nine shillings and fourpence, being paid to a French
priest, who was the Pheasant breeder.
Turtle Doves were only seen occasionally, maybe, and
cultivators of the soil would not have had to complain of
their plots being devastated by armies of omnivorous Wood
Pigeons. The House Sparrow was establishing itself, and
was already honoured with a nickname, f Rooks were being
seriously complained of, and an Act was passed in Scotland in
1424 (I James 1, cap. 19) to keep them in check, which, put
into modern English, ran as follows : — " Item. Therefore as
men consider that Rooks building in church-yards, orchards,
or trees do great damage upon corn, it is ordained that they
whom such trees pertain to, do let them build, and suffer
on no wise that their young ones fly away, and where
it be proved that they build and the young be flown, and
the nests be found in the trees at May-day, the trees shall
forfeit to the King." In 1457 this was followed by a
second Act (II James 14, cap. 31) which also proscribed
Eagles, Buzzards, Kites, and some Hawk called " Mittales "
(elsewhere spelled Mittaine and Myttaine).J From 1457
until the present time it has been a moot question whether
Rooks do more harm than good, but the balance of evidence
is against them in the twentieth century as it was in the
fifteenth, and many farmers would like to see these obsolete
Acts revived, and the increasing Rooks greatly lessened.
In the fifteenth century the larger sorts of birds of
prey were no doubt abundant : the Buzzard, a common
* See pp. 10, 181, 265, 266, 271, 276.
f Phyllyp Sparrowe.
\ Probably from Mittle, to hurt or wound (see Jamieson's Soot. Diet.).
82 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
breeder throughout the land, as it is in some parts of
Europe still, and the Goshawk nesting in small numbers,
while the Osprey would have been no rare sight, and
Harriers much too common to call for remark.
One very interesting fact regarding the Kite, which
was first brought to the notice of naturalists by the late
Professor A. Newton, is that the Bohemian Schaschek — who
in the capacity of guide and Latin Secretary accompanied
the Baron Leo von Rozmital on his tour in England,
between 1465 and 1467 and kept a diary in Latin — after
mentioning London Bridge and the houses that stood upon
it, goes on to say that nowhere had he seen so great a
number of Kites as there. They were protected as useful
scavengers, and probably there was not a large town in
England without them. The Kites and Ravens in our towns
also excited the wonder of the Venetian Ambassador Capello,
an Italian who spent the winter of 1496-7 in England. In
his Journal, printed in the Camden Society's " Transactions "
(1847), his Secretary, writing for him, says: — "Common
fowls, pea-fowls, partridges, pheasants, and other small birds
abound here above measure, and it is truly a beautiful thing
to behold one or two thousand tame Swans upon the
river Thames, as I, and also your Magnificence have seen,
which are eaten by the English like ducks and geese.
Nor do they dislike what we so much abominate, i.e., crows,
rooks, and jackdaws ; and the raven may croak at his pleasure,
for no one cares for the omen ; there is even a penalty attached
to destroying them, as they say that they keep the streets
of the towns free from all filth.
" It is the same case with the Kites, which are so tame,
that they often take out of the hands of little children, the
bread smeared with butter, in the Flemish fashion, given to
them by their mothers." This gives a curious picture of
what London was like in the fifteenth century, when the city
was built of wood, and its streets were not yet paved.
Swans on the Thames. — The swans on the Thames were
no doubt protected, or there would not have been so
large a number as two thousand. They had already been
the subject of legislation under Edward III. in 1357, and in
1482 or 1483 there was again an enactment passed in their
FIFTEENTH CENTURY 83
favour, which recites that no person other than the son of
the King, or a substantial freeholder, could possess a swan-
mark. As this was the case, perhaps these Thames swans
were mostly Crown property. That they were maintained
in full strength until the succeeding century is shown by the
observations of a traveller, the Duke de Najera, who visited
England in 1543-4, who, referring to the Thames, says :
" Never did I see a river so thickly covered with swans as
this." * Another writer, who was an Italian bishop, Paul Jovius,
about the same time also alludes to them in his description of
Britain. That the King was accustomed to maintain swan-
herds, who were responsible for the birds, on other rivers besides
the Thames, is certain, and he had also the prerogative right
of seizing his subject's swans, if they were not marked.
Birds seen by Vergil. — Another Italian, Polydore Vergil,-)-
who visited England four years later, also remarks on the
Swans upon lakes and rivers, but says nothing about Kites.
What Vergil seems to have been most struck with were the
Kentish hens and the delicacy of young grass-fed Geese.
" Of wilde burdes these are most delicate, partriches,
phesaunts, quayles, owsels, thrusshes, and larckes." Of the
Skylark he remarks, " This laste burde in winter season, the
wether not being to owtragios, dothe waxe wonderus fatte,
at which time a wonderfull nombre of them is caughte. . . ,"
Like Capello, Vergil marvelled at the Crows, Rooks and
Jackdaws, which he had not been accustomed to see so
numerous in Italy : " Crowes and chowghes [Jackdaws] are
everie daj^e in the morning earlie harde clattering in theire
kinde. In noe cuntrie is there a greater multitude of crowse ;
being soe harmefull a kinde of birdes, yet are thie spared in
that lande, bie cause thei eate woormes and other vermin ..."
He also gives another reason why Crows and Rooks were
spared, and that was because Herons were wont to build in
their old and disused nests, and Herons were of prime
importance for Hawking. %
* " Archaeologia," XXIII., p. 355 (trans.).
f "Polydore Vergil's English History," translation, printed for the
Camden Society, 1846, p. 23.
\ This supposed habit of the Heron, on which Ray cast doubts (" The
Ornithology," p. 278), has met with no confirmation by modern observers,
nor does it seem likely that it is founded on fact.
84
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Hawking in England. — What Hawking was like in the
fifteenth century is to some extent a matter of conjecture,
. F
.^Ad^Jfmait4ffiffy/tt'y6a^^J^^^KAlU!6/?
but there is a good deal about it which may be gathered
from the correspondence of the Norfolk family of Paston.
The Paston Letters, which were written by different members
FIFTEENTH CENTURY 85
of a distinguished family during the reigns of Henry VI.,
Edward IV. and Richard III., have formed the text of an
article by Professor Newton in the second edition of Lubbock's
" Fauna of Norfolk "* where the references to Hawking are
discussed, and extracts given.
That the high estate of Falconry had lost none of its
prestige is very possible, for in the fifteenth century it was
still a usual out-of-door exercise with the English nobility,
and so it remained until firearms were invented. Important
personages still showed a preference for being painted in
hawking costume, or holding a Hawk, the taste for this species
of dress implied love of the chase, which was universal and
ardently followed. All this may be inferred from the literature
of the time, as well as from the pages of the " Bibliotheca
Accipitraria," in which Mr. Harting gives a portrait — here
reproduced by permission — of one of the Kings of Scotland
as a young man, holding a Sparrow-Hawk on his wrist.
As the use of guns superseded the chasing of birds by trained
Hawks, so did it at a later date supersede the employment of
the Decoy for catching Ducks. That Norfolk, with its large
extent of flat country, some of it comparatively treeless,
was well suited for falconry is easily understood, and the
pursuit of it was probably general among the rich. Early
as is the Paston correspondence, it does not contain the first
reference to Hawking in Norfolk, for, as pointed out by the
Rev. T. S. Cogswell, there are three incidental allusions to
it in the Domesday Book.
Feasting and Food. — There was not a little gluttony
displayed in the heavy carousals of the Middle Ages, but they
have the merit of having bequeathed to us some particulars
about a good many birds which perhaps we should not other-
wise have had. On great occasions a Boar's head " enarmede,"
that is larded, was brought in, or a Peacock " endored," i.e.,
with its head gilt, enveloped in its own skin after roasting,
formed the principal course, and being lifted high by the
bearers, was ceremoniously placed on the board. Thus
garnished it was a " Pecok enhakyll," that is to say, a Peacock
dressed. Fosbroke says the Pheasant sometimes divided the
honours with the Peacock, and was decorated not only with
* Southwell's edn., 1879, p. 224.
86 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
its own prismatic feathers, but with a collar of gold, to enhance
its gaudy appearance. Greatly did the good things shine
forth at British festivals, when
" O'er capon, heron-shaw and crane,
And princely peacock's gilded train,
And o'er the boar's head garnished brave,
And cygnets from St. Marys wave ;
O'er ptarmigan and venison,
The priest had spoke his benison."
— Sir Walter Scott.
The price of a Peacock was about one shilling, and we
may judge how plentiful they were from George Neville's
banquet, to be mentioned immediately. But the Peacock
was not the only bird in favour ; there was the Swan, and
at Henry V.'s Coronation dinner (1413) a chief ornament
of the royal table, at which he and Katherine his consort
were to be seated, was a Pelican. This ornithological centre
piece was seated upon her nest, with her young birds round
her, probably modelled in sugar and paste. A dish of this
kind was termed a " sutiltie," a device our forefathers were
very fond of at banquets. If this Pelican was a real bird
it must have come from the south, as such a rarity would
hardly have been procurable in England. Samuel Pegge's
" Forme of Cury " (cookery) compiled by the master cooks
of Richard II. explains the composition of many unusual
dishes.
Bishops Neville and Warham. — Of all the public feasts of
which we have any record, the most extravagant as regards
consumption of provisions were in September, 1465, when
Neville, the Chancellor of England, was made Archbishop of
York,* and a few years later, when Warham was enthroned at
Canterbury. The quantity of porpoises, seals, and fish of all
descriptions, fresh or salted, on the second occasion, is even
in excess of the goodly provision of birds on the first, but
the numbers given probably represent what were ordered, not
what were actually brought to table.
* For the precise date, Sept. 22nd and 23rd, 1465, I am indebted to
Mr. W. H. Mullens;
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
87
The following list of what was commanded for Neville's
banquet is taken from the " Appendicis [sic] ad Joannis
Lslandi antiquarii collectanea."
Wild Bulls
6
Swans
400
Geese ...
.. 2000
Capons
.. 1000
Plovers
400
Quayles
.. 1200
The Foules called Rees
.. 2400
Peacocks
104
Mallards and Teal
.. 4000
Cranes ...
.. 204
Rabbits...
.. 4000
Bittors
204
Heronsbawes ...
400
Fessauntes
200
Partridges
500
Woodcocks
400
Curlews
100
Egrittes
.. 1000
Stags
500
Pike and Bream
608
Porpoises and Seals
12
Besides the birds in the above list, there are named in
the particulars of the courses Redshanks, Styntes, Larks and
Martynettes, but what these last were is not clear, probably
Swallows. *
Egrets and " Rees." — It has been thought that Neville's
Egrets were Lapwings, and to this theory Newton lent his
support, but this can hardly be maintained, because in many
later instances, some of which are cited by Mr. F. J. Stubbs,t
both are mentioned. On the other hand, that the Egret was
ever in any sense abundant in England would be difficult
to establish, nor is it conceivable that a thousand could be
obtained at one time.
* A quite different list of the birds and other viands at Neville's feast —
including even the " Ganetz " — is given in " A Noble Boke Off Cookry "
(15th cent.), edited from the Holkham MSS. by Mrs. A. Napier in 1882 (p. 7).
f " Zoologist," 1910, pp. 150, 380.
88
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
The Egret of these old lists was a name taken from the
French Aigrette, to which possibly not much meaning was
attached by the writers, beyond that it was something of
the Heron tribe, which claimed that name. It is likely MS.
STCF^O ^^
MARSHLANDS DRAINED BY THE GREAT BEDFORD LEVEL. (The shaded area.)
cookery books based on French and Italian sources, similar
to the Forme of Cury, were in existence, from which many
terms and even the names of birds were borrowed, and the
name of Egret must have been found in them. Yet such a
bird as the Egret may at that time have had a more northern
FIFTEENTH CENTURY 89
breeding-range, attracted by the fen lands of Cambridgeshire
and South Lincoln ; for Vermuyden, the Dutchman, had not
yet drained the " Great Level." Even long after drainage had
been begun, there stiU extended from Ely to the Wash some
300,000 acres of marsh land, very tempting to aquatic birds.
The Fowls called Bees. — The Fowls called Rees, which
the larderer was evidently doubtful about, and which Pennant
imagined to be to be Land-rails, are now known to have been
Ruffs and Reeves, but where could they have expected to
get 2400 head of a species which was little more than a summer-
migrant ? Evidently Neville's figures must not be accepted too
literally, but must be taken in the sense of a general estimate.
Identity of the bird called a Brewe. — At a great feast held
in London in honour of King Richard II., in September 1387,
among " The pultry " enumerated in " the purviaunce," we
meet with " x dosen Curlewes, xij dosen Brewes."* The
Brewe also comes into sundry documents of the fifteenth
century, e.g., Russell's " Boke of Nurture" (1452), and of
the sixteenth century, e.g., on the occasion of the visit of
Charles V. to England in 1522. f At a later date there is
some change in the name, which in 1605 is spelled Brue.J It
has generally been supposed that this bird was the Whimbrel,
but names were used somewhat indiscriminately in those
days, and very likely it sometimes served for the Godwit,
as Mr. F. J. Stubbs has suggested.! In the reign of Edward I.
a brewe was valued at eighteen pence, and a Curlew at six-
pence in 1275 and the same prices held good in 1384, || which
implies a decided culinary inferiority for the Curlew, which
was either commoner or less appreciated. The name brewe
may be synonymous with breve, i.e., small or short.
One of the receipts given in Cookery-books of the fifteenth
century is for " Brew rost," of which the following version
may be taken from " A noble boke off cookry ffor a prynce
houssolde.""[{— Brew rost. — A Brewe, sley him in the mouthe
* "Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books" (Early English Text Society,
1848, p. 67).
f " Rutland Papers," p. 76. Camden Soe. Publications, 1842.
% " Archaeologia," 1800, p. 341.
§ " Zoologist," 1910, p. 154.
|| Supra, p. 71.
If Edited by Mrs. A. Napier, 1882, p. 63.
90 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
as a curlewe, skeld hym and drawe hym as a henne, then brek
hisleggs at the kne and tak away the bone from the kne to the
foot, as a heron cut of the nek, by the bodye, then rost hym and
raise his winces and his legges as a heron, and no sauce but sf It.
The opening sentence " sley him in the mouthe," with
a knife or other instrument, seems to imply that the
" Brues " were netted, and kept in pens until wanted.
Henry IV. — Interesting also are the birds served up
on other festive occasions, as at the nuptials of Henry IV.
in 1403, and at the coronation of Henry VI. in 1422.*
Again there is the document known as Russell's " Boke
of Nurture " (1452) which contains the names of birds,
of which one is the Stockdove, but both here and in
" The Boke of Keruynge " (1513), we may take it that the
appellation of Stockdove is meant to apply to tame Pigeons,
now kept in large numbers. The birds served at Henry VI. 's
dinner included the mysterious Egrettes, Curlew, Cocks, Plover,
Quails, Snipe, Lirks, Swan, Heron, Crane, Partridge, Bittern,
Peacock. f One might have expected that Spoonbills would
have been mentioned in all these Dietaries, but they are not.
Yet as " shovelards " they come into one of the vocabularies
of this century, and under the same name we find them twice
alluded to in John Russell's quaint book of recipes, and once
in "The Boke of Keruynge." That they made a show at some
principal feasts is evident, as at Oxford, where under the
equivalent name of Poplars we meet with them in 1452. J
Perhaps it is worth remarking that in a very different way
they come into the will of Richard Le Scrop, dated 1400.§
* And at the Duke of Buckingham's wedding in 1480 (" Archaeologia,' '
1834, p. 311).
f See " A Chronicle of London from 1080 to 1483, written in the Fifteenth
Century" (1827), Notes, p. 169, and comments in " Norfolk Archaeology,"
I., p. 276, where the Egret is held by Mr. Dashwood to be the young of the
Heron. This coronation feast took place on the 6th day of November, 1429.
J Episcopal Feasting described in " Historia et Antiquitatis TJniversi-
tatis Oxoniensis " (1674, lib. 1, p. 219).
§ Here among many other things the scribe has put down . " . . aulam
meam cum poplars textam, et lectum meum integrum cum costeris de rubeo
cum poplars et armis meis broudatum . . " (" Testamenta Eboracensia"
part I., p. 276). Where designs of birds were used, Spoonbills would be
a favourite decoration. Examples of this occur more often abroad, but
as " Popelers " on tapestry they form an item in the Roll of the effects of
Sir J. Fastolfe of Norfolk 'in 1459 (" Archaeologia," 1827, p. 332, and see
Gairdner's edition of the Paston Letters, Vol. I., pp. 479, 483).
Chapter VIII.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY (1st Part).
The Sixteenth Century (1st part): Solan Geese of Canada. John Major.
Hector Boece. The name Brissel.
The Boke of Phyllyp Sparrowe, compiled by Master
[John] Skelton (1508). — The awakening of western Europe
at the end of the fifteenth century and beginning of the
sixteenth, led to an increasing search for knowledge, obtained
by means of personal observation and actual experiment.
Hitherto the attitude of learned men towards animals and
plants had not had much relation to real knowledge, but
improvement slowly began to manifest itself. The position
of those who claimed to be scientific teachers was still rather
vague, such men were rather to be called explainers. Theirs
was what a learned writer has termed an elaborate doctrine
of symbolism which comprised all nature. This is demon-
strated in more ways than one ; it is shown not only
by the importance attached to the medical properties of
herbs, but also by the anatomical schools which began to be
founded, in which the study of animals was recommended
not to be neglected. Nevertheless, zoology, as we now under-
stand the word, moved at a very slow pace, and it certainly
is remarkable how little there is about birds in the literature
of any country before the middle of the sixteenth century.
Birds were regarded as things which could or could not, be
eaten, and no further interest was taken in them ; they did
not possess the virtue which was supposed to lie in herbs,
and there were very few medical secrets which physicians
could hope to extract from them. " The Boke of Phyllyp
Sparrowe," written by a native of Norfolk, is some exception
to this rule, for the poem brings in the names of sixty-nine
birds. They are all recognisable, except the " Rouse " and
the " Kowgh," which latter may be " Chough." Route or
92 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Rout is also a Scotch provincialism, and Jamieson thinks it
was a name intended for the Brent Goose.*
Meaning of Brent Goose. — The Brent is a bird which I
have often heard called Rode or Road Goose on the estuary
of the river Tees in Durham, where in winter it is rather
common, and this is an appellation not very dissimilar from
the spelling adopted by the poet Skelton. On the coast of
Durham the name Road Goose has probably been in use
for centuries, judging from Willughby's mention in " The
Ornithology" (1678, p. 361) of the Rat-Goose or Road
Goose, as coming in packs to the Tees. It is curious that
neither Willughby nor Ray realised that the Road Goose was
the same as the Brent Goose — an error in which they were
followed by Ray's friend, Samuel Dale.
In connection with Scotland, the word " Routs " also
occurs in Gordon's "Earldom of Sutherland" (1630), as
well as the name Ringouse, which latter is similar to the
German Ringel-Gans, and is probably another name for the
Brent. From Mr. J. E. Harting's observations it would
appear to be very likely that both these names, as well as
Rut-goys (1530),f Rot-gans of the Dutch, and Radde-Guss
of the Heligolanders are traceable to the same root, and
have been earned by this species from its habit of feeding
upon grass-wrack, submerged at high, and exposed at low,
tide. J
The Solan Goose, 1511-1529. — Information about the
Solan Goose is still scanty, but it is now that we first hear,
and from four different sources, of the famous Gannetry on
Ailsa Craig, as well as of the equally important one at Sulisgeir
on the north-west coast of Scotland. Royalty was not averse
from partaking of the Solan Goose, as appears from the Privy-
purse accounts of James IV. of Scotland, some items from
which have been communicated by Mr. J. Anderson, who
* See " Dictionary of the Scottish Language " (1825, Suppt.).
f Item, 3 Februarii [1533] 1 rutgoys, 3d. — 1 mawlert [mallard], 2d.
— 6 rlunlyngs, 2d. — 1 seepye, Id. (" Liber Bursarii Eccle=iai Dunelmensis,
p. 327). On another page of this " Liber " it is amusing to read of " 3 pisces
vocatos puffynes " being brought to the Prior (p. 54). On pages 46 and 129
the Whyrnpernell is mentioned, no doubt the Whimbrel.
J See " Handbook of British Buds," 1901, p. 238. " Rodge," as applied
to the Gadwall, probably has the same origin. Rotington, in Cumberland,
is thought to derive its name from Rotgoose (" Fauna of Lakeland," p. 244).
94 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
observes that the prices are in Scotch money. On September
11th, 1511, there was bought " i sollane " *, on the 14th,
" ij sollanis ijs," on the 15th, " ij sollanis ijs," and on the
22nd " ij sollanis ijs."
The 6th August, 1512, when the accounts close, would
have been rather too early for young Solans to be on sale,
and after that Mr. Anderson finds a long gap of nineteen years
in the series — namely, until September, 1531.
In the " Libri emptorum " of the next King, James V. —
printed by the Bannatyne Club f — among many purchases for
the furnishing the royal larder, such as Moorfowls, Partridges,
Wild Geese, Swans, Teal, Plovers, Herons, Cranes, Dotterel,
Redshanks, Larks, etc., we find nine or ten references to
Solan Geese. Thus we have an entry of : "ij porcelli ij auce
solares," probably a clerk's slip for "solanes." These were
served to the King on September 4th, 1525, at Edinburgh.
And again on August 17th, 1529, there is " Empt' vj auce
solares." Auca is a well-recognised Latin name for the Goose,
and one adopted by many authors. In the preface, the
editor of these " Excerpta E Libris," Professor John Fleming,
has some interesting notes about the birds which were eaten,
in the course of which he says : " The Turkey, Guineafowl
and Pheasant appear to be wanting, though the Peacock
holds a place The Quail is occasionally noticed as
Qualye ; while a bird under the name of Coturnix, obtained
from August to April, and which might have been suspected
as similar, is probably the Water-Rail. There is no reference
to the Ptarmigan or the Capercaillie. . . . The Wood-
Pigeon, under the name of Turtur, was occasionally purchased.
With the exception of Larks, which are occasionally referred
to, the list of land birds is thus limited. Among the Waders,
the Heron is occasionally recorded under the names of Herle,J
Ardea and Ciconia." The Crane is referred to, but I shall
have more to say about this, and would now notice the
Meaning of the name Solaii Goose. — All that can be said
about the etymology of the obscure word Solan is admirably
set forth in Professor W. Skeat's " Etymological Dictionary,"
* Price defaced, probably js.
f Proc, LIV., p. 14, and App. 3, 23.
\ ? Heme.
6
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 95
as well as in " The New English Dictionary " (1912). Professor
Skeat could not accept the plausible explanation propounded
in Martin's " Voyage to St. Kilda,"* which was that the name
Solan was derivable from the Irish, i.e., Gaelic, word Sou'l-er
— pronounced Shulare-f — in allusion to the bird's sharp sight.
Some of the appellations employed for the Solan Goose
are rather curious, and the spelling varies considerably.
British authors alone afford us no less than seventeen
different spellings of Solan, but in the seventeenth century
every one was free to follow his fancy. The Swedish names
for the Solan Goose are Sillebasse and Bergshammar, see
Nilsson's " Skandinavisk Fauna. "J Dr. Herluf Winge has
been good enough to inform me that the equivalent in
Danish of Sillebas would be Sildebas (or Sildebasse), and of
Bergshammar, Bjerghammer : Sill or Sild is a herring, and
Sild roget a red herring.
' ; Bas or Basse," continues Dr. Winge, " means a bi.
person, especially used for big children. Sildebas would
thus mean the big herring-bird, but possibly the bas in
Sillebas may be the same as the ' bas ' in Bassgas, which is
another Swedish name for the Gannet, implying the goose
from Bassrock." I am indebted to Professor Jagerskiold for
further assistance in verifying these Swedish names.
Skinnemis (Icelandic) and Skinderyiis (Danish form), on
the authority of Dr. Winge, are very apposite appellations.
He observes that their equivalent in English would be skin-
sleeve, evidently from the loose manner in which the skin
adheres to the body in the Solan Goose.
Origin of the name Gannet. — The ancient appellation of
Gannet is still in favour on English coasts, as well as in Wales
and Ireland, but in Scotland it gives place to the more northern
name of Solan. As to the origin of Gannet, Dr. John Jamieson,
in his " Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language "
(1808), has "To Gant, Gaunt, v.n., To yawn, by opening
the mouth." Whether applied to the Goose or the Gannet
it may be taken as meaning the opening of the mouth for
feeding, biting, crying out or gaping.
* " St. Kilda," p. 49.
f See " Irish Naturalist," 1015, p. 115.
% 3rd edn., 1858. "Foglarna," II., p. 510.
96 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
The Solan Geese of Canada. — Although these annals of
the past are chiefly confined to British birds, there is no
particular reason for thus limiting them, for the history
of ornithology in the Middle Ages in other countries is also
replete with openings for study — indeed, there is very much
which will repay investigation between about a.d. 1450 and
a.d. 1700, both in Europe and in the New World. In former
days the Solan. Geese had breeding-places in North America,
which have long since become deserted. One of these, which
was on Funk Island, Newfoundland, is described as follows
in the quaint log-book of an adventurous French navigator
named Jacques Cartier.
Translation after Richard Halduyt, the geographer*
" Upon the 21 of May [1534]," says Cartier, " the winde
being in the West, we noised saile, and sailed toward North
and by East from the cape of Buona Vista [on the east of
Newfoundland] until we came to the Island of Birds, which
was environed about with a banke of ice, but broken and
crackt : notwithstanding the sayd banke, our two boats went
thither to take in some birds, whereof there is such plenty,
that unlesse a man did see them, he would thinke it an incredible
thing : for albeit the Island (which containeth about a league
in circuit) be so full of them, that they seerne to have been
brought thither, and sowed for the nonce, yet are there an
hundred folde as many hovering about it as within ; some of
the which are as big as jayes, blacke and white, with beaks
like unto crowes : they lie alwayes upon the sea ; they cannot
flie very high, because their wings are so little, and no bigger
than halfe ones hand, yet do they flie as swiftly as any birds
of the aire levell to the water ; they are also exceeding fat ;
we named them Aporath [? Razorbill (Alca torda)]. In lesse
than halfe an houre we filled two boats full of them, as if
they had bene with stones : so that besides them which we
did eat fresh, every ship did powder and salt five or six barrels
full of them. Besides these, there is another kinde of birds
* " The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries
of the English Nation." By Richard Hakluyt (Edition 1904), pp. 184, 192
Hakluyt's translation is here slightly altered to bring it into line with the
•' Relation Originale." For a knowledge of this " Relation" having been
recently published in English — see " A Memoir of Jacques Cartier," by J. P.
Baxter — I am indebted to Mr. Francis Jenkinson.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 97
which hover in the aire, and over the sea, lesser than the
others ; and these doe all gather themselves together in the
Island, and put themselves under the wings of other birds
that are greater : these we named Godetz [? Guillemot (Uria
troille)]. There are also another sort of them bigger, that are
white, which place themselves apart from the others in one part
of the island, and which are very bad to attack, for they bite
like dogs and are called Margaulx." These Margaulx were
the Solan Geese. " And notwithstanding," continues the
narrative, " the said island may be fourteen leagues from land,
the bears pass thither by swimming from the mainland to eat
of the said birds, of which our man found one of them [the
bears] as big as a cow, and as white as a Swan, which leaped
into the sea before them."
These " Margaulx " were Solan Geese, but it does not
read as if they were very numerous. Cartier must have been
mistaken in thinking that Guillemots put themselves under
the wings of other birds, but perhaps it is the translation
which is at fault here.
Shortly after another island was visited, in which again
were " great store of Godetz, and crowes with red beakes and
red feete : they make their nests in holes under the ground
even as Conies." These so-called Crows must have been
Puffins.
The Second Account of Jacques Cartier. — The second
passage about Solan Geese in Carders journal is dated about
a month later.
Translation after HaMuyt.
" The next day being the 25 of the moneth [June 1534]
. . . wee went Southeast, about 15 leagues, and came to
three Hands, two of which are as steepe and upright as any
wall, so that it Avas not possible to climbe them : and betweene
them there is a little rocke. These Hands were as full of
birds, as any field or medow is of grasse, which there do make
their nestes : and in the greatest of them, there was a great
and infinite number of those that wee call Margaulx, that are
white, and bigger than any geese, Avhich were severed in one
part. In the other were onely Godetz, but toward the shoare
there were of those Godetz, and great Apponatz [Great Auk,
98 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Alca impennis] like to those of that Hand that we above have
mentioned : we went downe to the lowest part of the least
Hand, where we killed above a thousand of those Godetz, and
Apponatz. We put into our boates so many of them as we
pleased, for in lesse than one houre we might have filled
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thirtie such boats of them : we named them The Hands of
Margaulx."
The identity of these three islands with Bird Rocks is
sufficiently established, and it is evident that in 1534 Cartier
found Gannets in greater plenty there than at Funk Island,
As to the signification of the Indian names, Aporath or Aponalh
meant Razorbill, Great Apponatz the Garefowl, and Godetz
or Godets probably the Guillemot.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 99
That "Margot," of which "Margaulx" is intended for
the plural, meant Gannet is clear; indeed, it is a
French fisherman's name for that species applied to this day
in the English Channel and Pas-de-Calais. Equivalent to
Sea-fisher, from " mer," the sea, it was capable of having
two meanings, for Cartier's sailors may not have been un-
mindful of a black-and-white bird at home, the Magpie,
commonly called " Margot " in France.
Here it may be observed that there are five Norman
names for the Solan Goose, which are Margu, Boubie,
Harenguier, Margast and Sagan* and of these Marga is the
commonest ."j" Margot is the Picard spelling.! Harenguier
means the herring-fisher, while Sagan is synonymous with
the Gaelic Sgadan, and also stands for herring.
John Major and Hector Boece. — As we are partly
treating in this chapter of the Solan Goose, it may be proper
to quote some account of its celebrated Scotch home, the
Bass Rock, which lies off the coast of Haddington. The
first description of the Bass Rock Gannets is discoverable
in the " De Gestis Scotorum," written by John Major (or
Mair) in 1518, and printed in 1521 at Paris as " Historia
majoris Britannia?." Major was born at Glegharnie, rather
less than four miles from the Bass, which explains the
commencement of his narrative and his familiarity with the
birds upon it.
Translation from the " De Gestis."
" In Lent and in summer, at the winter and the summer
solstice, people go in early morning from my own Gleghornie
and the neighbouring parts to the shore, drag out the poly-
pods [lobsters] and crabs with hooks, and return at noon
with well- filled sacks.
*****
" Near to Gleghornie, in the Ocean, at a distance of two
leagues, is the Bass Rock, wherein is an impregnable stronghold.
Round about it is seen a marvellous multitude of great clucks
(which they call Sollends) that live on fish. These fowl are not
* " Faune de la Normandie, p. 399."
f "Bull, de la Soe. Nat. d'Accl.," 1915, p. 29*.
t "Rev. Fr. d'Orn." II., p. 120.
100 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
of the very same species with the common wild duck or with
the domestic duck ; but inasmuch as they very nearly resemble
them in colour and in shape, they share with them the common
name, but for the sake of distinction are called solans. These
ducks then, or these geese, in the spring of every year return
from the south to the rock of the Bass in flocks, and for two
or three days, during which the dwellers on the rock are careful
to make no disturbing noise, the birds fly round the rock.
They then begin to build their nests, stay there throughout
the summer, living upon fish, and the inhabitants of the rock
eat the fish which are caught by them. The men climb to
the nests of the birds, and there get fish to their desire.
Stone Pyte§m.-..f... ( a £} # ' The B(S&S
(Hi "y U \^ /'S (North Bermtk Ptj)
West Cove W;rA J?7 IIS
Casfle>fc^§i2l^SA*^ ,,s * Cove
(Ruins of) ^^T^S^A/^
<£rarw Basnoflf^wIj&i&Ki! Landing
West L<mding \^^j
the bass tlock (Ordnance Survey).
Marvellous is the skill of this bird in the catching of fish.
With lynx-like eye he spies the fish at the bottom of the sea,
precipitates himself upon it, as the hawk upon the heron, and
then with beak and claw drags it to the surface [orig. : quern
protinus ore & ungulis extrahit] ; and if at some distance
from the rock he sees another fish better than the first that
has caught his eye, he lets the first escape until he has made
sure of the one that was last seen ; and thus on the rock
throughout the summer the freshest fish are always to be had.
The ducklings, or goslings, are sold in the neighbouring
country ; if you will eat of them twice or thrice you will find
them very savoury. For these birds are extremely fat, and
the fat skilfully extracted is very serviceable in the preparation
of drugs ; and the lean part of the flesh they sell. At the end
of autumn the birds fly round about the rock for the space
102 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
of three days, and afterward, in flocks [prig. : agminatim]
they take flight to southern parts for the whole winter, that
there they may live, as it were, in summer ; because, when
it is winter with us, it is summer with the people of the south.
These birds are very long-lived, a fact which the inhabitants
have judged bj^ marks upon some of them [prig. : Diulissime
hse aves vivunt, quod per quasdam insuper signatas incolss
perpenderunt]. The produce of these birds supports thirty
or forty men of the garrison upon the rock ; and some rent
is paid by them to the lord of the rock."
It will be observed that it was only because the young
Solans were of service to man as food, and because their fat
could be utilised in making drugs, that Major admits them
into his chronicle.
For any other reason birds would be regarded as too
trivial to mention in a serious work of history : accordingly
there is no allusion to the other species — Guillemot, Puffin,
Kittiwake, etc. — which must have inhabited the Bass Rock
in his day.
Boece's Cosmographe. — Hector Boece's description of
the Solan Geese is taken from Major, but what he says of
other birds in his famous " Cosmographe and Description of
Albion " (1526) has been accepted as original, and is worth
quoting. In Chapter XL, entitled " Of the gret plente of
Haris, Hartis, and uthir Avild Bestiall in Scotland. Of the
raervellus nature of sindry Scottis Doggis . . . ," after
speaking of these things, and of the noisome wolves, wild
horses and foxes, and of hounds of marvellous wit, he
continues : —
" Of fowls, such as live by plunder, there are sundry
kinds in Scotland ; as Eagles, Falcons, Goshawks, Sparrow-
Hawks, Merlins, and such-like fowls. Of water-fowls there is
so great a number, that it is a wonder to hear. Many other
fowls are in Scotland, which are seen in no other part of the
world ; as Capercaillie, a fowl larger than a Raven, which lives
always on the bark [? buds] of trees. In Scotland are many
more cocks and hens which eat nothing but seed, or crops
of heather. Such are great numbers of Blackcocks and hens,
not unlike to a Pheasant, both in quantity and savour of
their flesh ; but they have black feathers and red eyebrows.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 103
" And besides these three uncouth kind of fowls is one
other kind of fowls in the Mers,* more uncouth, named Gustards
as big as a Swan ; but in the colour of their feathers, and
taste of their flesh, they are little different from a Partridge.
These last fowls are not frequent, but few in number ; and
so fairly hate the company of man, that if they find their
eggs breathed upon or touched by men, they leave them, and
lay eggs in another place. They lay their eggs on the bare
earth."-]-
An account of Boece or Boethius, born about 1465, died
about 1536, is to be found in the " Dictionary of National
Biography " (V., 297), J as also a notice of Major.§
The Earl of Atholl's Feast. — It was about this date ap-
parently (1529) that the Earl of Atholl made lordly provision
for James V. when that king went to hunt in Perthshire.
No Solan Geese graced the table, but besides venison, no doubt
in plenty, the preparations for feasting included, as we learn
from the chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, goose, gryse
[young pig], capon, cunning [rabbit], cran, swan, pairtrick
[partridge], plever, duik, drake, brissel, cock [query brissel-
cock = Guineafowl] and paunies [Peacocks], black-cock, and
muirfoull and capercailles.|| Robert Lindsay's " cunnings "
were rabbits, and his " paunies " presumably Peacocks,
which were always in request at great feasts, and were gene-
rally served in their feathers. Jamieson gives " pawn " and
" pawne " as alternative spellings for the Peacock. The next
author to mention the Capercaillie is John Lesley (or Leslie),
who refers to it in 1578 as a bird inhabiting Ross and Inverness.
Introduction of the Turkey. The Name Brissel. — The
meaning of the name Brissel-cock in the above passage is some-
what obscure, and gave rise to a notable discussion in
" Notes and Queries," in which Professor Newton and other
correspondents took part.^j Brissel-cock was at first con-
* Mers, or Merse, that is the March or Border district of Berwickshire.
" Uncouth " is here used in the sense of " strange."
t " Cosmographe," ch. XI.
J And another by W. H. Mullens, in " A Bibliography of British Orni-
thology," 1916, p. 75.
§ XXXV., 386.
M " Chronicles of Scotland," 1728.
«[ See " Motes and Queries," 18S0 and 1881, pp. 22, 369.
104 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
sidered to mean the turkey, and there was nothing improbable*
in that supposition, for the name might have been bestoM^ed
in allusion to the hairy or bristly tuft which depends from
its breast. That it was the Turkey was the view taken by
that distinguished Scottish etymologist, Dr. Jamieson.* But
this is a theory which on consideration cannot be upheld ;
the name Brissel is not to be accepted as meaning a Turkey,
and this is partly because, as Professor Newton has pointed
out, there is every reason for believing that no Turkeys had
been brought to Britain at so early a date as 1529. The
bird was not even described until after that.
What Newton considers to be the earliest description
of the Turkey is found in the " Historia de las Indias " of
Oviedo (1535), where there is a rather imaginative relation of
a sort of Peacock with a bare neck, the skin of which changes
into divers colours. It was reported also to have a horn on
its forehead, and hairs upon its breast, no doubt in allusion to
the pendulous bristles which are characteristic of these birds.
On his return from Hayti, Oviedo had published the result
of numerous enquiries into General and Natural History,
and into the resources of the New World, then opening out
enormous possibilities to merchants and mariners. That
such a bird as the Turkey should excite great wonder was
to be expected, and its introduction into Spain desired. In
these reports he speaks of the Turkey as having been
brought from Mexico, but that did not deter Barrington
from erroneously, though with no small ability, maintaining
in a skilful essay (" Miscellanies," 1781) that it was Asiatic.
In this he was at issue with Count Buff on, who, some ten
years before, had published the contrary, and we now know
that Buffon was correct, and that John Ray-j- and other
early naturalists were wrong.
In his "Whole Art and Trade of Husbandry" (1614),
the poet Barnabe Googe says that no Turkeys were seen in
England before 1530, but there is no documentary evidence
of their being here even then. It was not until eleven years
later that some directions laid down by Archbishop Cranmer
* See " Dictionary Scottish Language," 1808 and Suppl., 1825.
f " Ornithology," p. 160.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 105
assure us of the fact of there being Turkeys in England, and
that is the first certain date.
In 1541, in Cranmer's " A Dietarie," here alluded
to. which was probably saved from destruction by the
antiquary John Leland, and is printed in the posthumous
" Collectanea " of that author, it is provided that for certain
degrees of rank there should be served one Crane, Swan,
Turkeycock, Haddock, Pike, or Tench, etc. Of lesser birds,
such as Pheasants and Blackcocks, there might be two. Of
Partridges an archbishop could have three, a bishop and other
degrees under him only two. This is the first proof of there
being any Turkeys in England.
It is true that we have a suggestion of their introduction
afforded by certain lines in Sir Richard Baker's " Chronicles
of the Kings of England,"* which run : —
" Turkeys, Carps, Hops, Piccarel [Pike] and Beer,
Came into ENGLAND all in one year."
This is quoted in Barrington's Essay on the Turkey f
with approval, and would be an earlier reference than
Cranmer's, but unfortunately it is pronounced by Professor
Newton to be untrustworthy.
The Guineajoid. — Another meaning must therefore tie
sought f or Brissel-cock. If not intended for the Blackgrouse,
which is separately specified, it may mean a Cuineafowl,
which is the signification favoured by Professor Newton,
whose researches led him to conclude that in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries the Guineafowl and Turkey were
confounded by several of the mediaeval zoologists. Chief of
those who fell into this error were Belon, Aldrovandus and
Sir Thomas Elyot, the latter of whom in 1542 says, " Melea-
grides, byrdes which we doo call hennes of Genny, or Turkie
hennes," supposing them to be the same. Sir Robert Sibbald
was one who in this country did not help to clear the confusion
by giving in 1684 the name of meleagris to the Turkey, among
the birds of Scotland.! Thus the name Turkey Hen was,
as Newton observes, at first and for a time synonymous with
* 1684, p. 298.
f " Miscellanies," by Kon. D. Barrington, 1781, p. 127.
| " Prodromus Historise Naturalis " (Pars sec, p. 16).
106 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Guinea Hen, but as the birds became commoner and better
known, the confusion was gradually cleared up.
Professor Newton also considers it to be the Guineafowl
which is alluded to in " A description of Angus [Forfarshire],"
by Robert Edward, a minister of Dundee, written in 1678,
a translation of which appeared in 1793, from which he
quotes*: "Angus is well stored with tame birds, and the
great people possess hens of Brazil, peacocks, geese and
ducks. Pigeon -houses are frequent."
In this passage, which differs from the translation
supplied in Harvie-Brown's " The Capercaillie in Scotland,"!
the word " Brissel " has become corrupted into Brazil. I
suppose this arose from some idea that Guineafowls had come
from the recently discovered country of Brazil (in French
Bresil) in South America, J just as some consider the name
Turkey to have been given because these North American
birds were thought to have come from Turke\',§ It is also
pointed out that the name Brissel foivlis, which is equivalent
to Brissel-cock, occurs in a letter written by James VI. of
Scotland, on the occasion of the baptism of his second son
Charles I.|| As regards the derivation of " Brissel," in Pro-
fessor Newton's opinion it is simply a corruption of the French
Coq de broussaille, that is, a cock of the brushwood, and he
submits that the sixteenth century form of the word broissaille
brings it even nearer to the Scottish pronunciation. That it
has any connection with the old Scotch word for to broil, which
was " brissel," as suggested by Mr. A. C. Jonas in " Notes
and Queries, "|[ cannot for a moment be entertained.
* "Notes and Queries," 1881, p. 3(19.
t 1879, p. 20.
% On the other hand, Thomas Muffett ("Health's Improvement,"
p. 84) was hopelessly astray in his opinion that they came from North
Africa.
§ The name Turkey. — This was John Ray's opinion, and perhaps
Willughby's too. After quoting Peter Gyllius, a traveller who died in 1555,
after writing a work on the Antiquities of Constantinople, these authors say
about the bird : "In English they are called Turkeys, because they are thought
to have been first brought to us out of Turkey " (" Ornithology," p. 100).
But there is still another and very different theory as to the meaning
of the name Turkey, which Professor Newton was one of the first to put
forward, viz. that by its own note, resembling " turk," the bird had very
likely named itself {see " Dictionary of Birds," p. 994).
|| " Notes and Queries," 1880, p. 203.
^J T.c, 1881, p. 193.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 107
Foids and Capons. — Capons as distinguished from
chickens, -well fatted, were in constant demand, being a very
favourite dish, and Thorold Rogers remarks that they were
dearer during the fifteenth century than they were in the
fourteenth, when the average price was threepence. In
1510 it was ninepence halfpenny, and in the following decade
a shilling and a halfpenny. " Frequently," he observes,
" these capons are purchased for royal and noble persons, or
for banquets, when exceptional outlay was expected and
incurred. A distinction is drawn towards the latter end of
the period [circa 1582], between coarse capons and capons of
grease [i.e., well fatted], the latter being the choicest produce
of the farm-yard. The latter quality is also described as
Kent capons."*
The Peacock. — Peafowl continued to be in favour for
civic feasts, and must have been rather generally kept, for
Wilham Harrison (1577), who has a good deal to say about
domestic fow]s, geese and ducks, makes no distinction in
this respect between them and the " peacocks of Inde."
Andrew Boorde (1562), the author of one of the earliest
Dietaries, says : " Yonge peechyken of halfe a yere of age
be praysed. Okie pecockes be harde of dygestyon." Arch-
bishop Neville ordered a hundred and four for his great
feast, f but we are not told if that number actually came up
to table. The following is a recipe for cooking them : — ■
" A peacock flayed, parboiled, larded, and stuck thick
with cloves ; then roasted, with his feet wrapped up to keep
them from scorching ; then covered again with his own skin
as soon as he is cold, and so underpropped that, as alive, he
seems to stand on his legs." Thus prepared and placed on
the table, and served in a large dish, the Peacock might with
good reason be termed, as John Cotgrave has it, a gallant
and dainty service — it was, in effect, a " peacock enhakyll,"
that is to say, a dressed Peacock; hakyl or hakel being an
old English word for clothing. % Other cookery books also
commend the Peacock.
* " Agriculture and Prices in England," IV., p. 342. Polydore Vergil
alludes to Kentish hens as being the largest, as does Dr. Muffett in 1595.
f Supra, p. 87.
I Supra, p. 85.
108 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
The Keeping of Tame Geese. — That domesticated Geese,
originally the progeny of wild Grey-lag Geese, were a source
of profit may be safely inferred, and that they were largely
kept and pastured on the grass-lands of several counties, and
particularly in Lincolnshire, Huntingdon, Cambridge and
Norfolk. These Geese were most likely very close in the tints
of their plumage to the original wild stock of Anser cinereus,
from which they sprang, and so they continued to be for
long af t erwards . *
William Harrison (1577), f who has a good deal to say
about tame Geese, chiefly from a utilitarian point of view,
observes that in many places they were bred less for eating than
for the sake of their valuable feathers. Large droves, he tells
us. were attended by a gossard, no doubt packed together, and
driven slowly along, as they continued to be in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, for custom is not likely to have
changed much. J Harrison, who was a canon of Windsor,
appears to have been much struck by the spectacle of Geese
being led to a field like sheep, remarking that " their goose-
herd carries a rattle of paper or parchment with him, when
he goeth about in the morning to gather his goslings together,
the noise whereof no sooner cometh to their ears than they fall
to gagling, and hasten to go with him," obedient to the sound.
In the le Straunge accounts, which will be the subject of
the next chapter, we find tame Geese named seven or eight
times in connection with rabbits and wild -fowl, but the items
may be worth giving.
To a wife of Yngaldesthorpe for vi gees xxd.
A Goos, iij Malards, ij Telys, and ij conyes of store.
A Goose and a coney of gist
A Goos vd.
A Goose, a cockerell, and ij coneys of store.
To Potter's daughter of Holme for bryngyng of a goose jd.
* In the early part of last century, when my father as a young man used
to travel by road in Marshland and South Lincolnshire, he has told me that
he was in the habit of passing many flocks of tame Geese being fed on the
grass-lands, and that the large proportion of whole-coloured grey ones was
very marked.
■f A contributor to "Holinshed's Chronicles."
J See Rowley's pictures of Geese in "Ornithological Miscellany," III. ,
pi. 105, et seq
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 109
Some of these were evidently Michaelmas Geese, which
had been fatted on the stubbles on shelled-out grain. We
have besides entries of :
ij grene geese [i.e., off the grass in spring] vd.
j dosen greengeese xvd.
Warner's man for iij greengeese ij
the vykers woman of Dokkynge for ij green geese and a
hundrethe eggs iiij
Origin of the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor). — Whether the Mute
Swan — that is to say the silent Swan, as compared with the
musical Whooper — is indigenous or not to the British Isles
must be a matter of opinion. Professor Newton takes the
view that so much early protection by law is indicative of
its having been an introduced bird,* but Europe was its
original habitat, so the theory of introduction is not neces-
sitated. Newton also considers that it was once far more
abundant in England than it is at the present time, and this
seems to be justified by old records. Although wild Swans
occasionally stay a while with tame ones, and have been even
known to mate with them, they never produce any hybrid
progeny, showing how distinct the two species are, which indeed
their different carriage plainly proves.
Domestication of the Mute Swan. — We have seen what
importance was attached to Swans in the fifteenth century,
and also later than that, as clearly indicated by the rights
and privileges appertaining to them.f Capello, de Najera,
Jovius and Vergil in turn allude to the English Swans, but
the last named notes that they were sometimes " not soe
small a pleasure to the beeholder as a great greefe of
minde."J Here he must mean that quarrels took place
for possession, the ownership of cygnets being difficult to
establish, but to remedy this state of things a system of
marks was invented.
Swan-rights were by no means diminished during the
sixteenth century ; whether emanating from the Crown, or
on behalf of the religious houses, they had to be enforced,
and the penalties for infringing them were exceedingly severe.
* " Dictionary of Birds," p. 929.
t Supra, pp. 70, 82.
{ English History. ("Camden Soc. Tr.," 1846, Vol. I., p. 23.)
110 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Abundant as were these birds upon the Thames, where Capello
and de Najera saw them, there were plenty of other rivers
which had them too, and very destructive they must have
been to the fish, for Swans are great spawn eaters. The
Swan continued to rise in favour in this country, and in
Germany also, judging from the quotations given by a recent
writer.* This was chiefly for its edible qualities, but the
beauty of its white plumage was suggestive of purity of life,
and heraldry claimed it for an emblem. The King's swan-
herd was a man of no little consequence, he was the magister
cygnormn, holding jurisdiction over the whole kingdom, the
supervisor of all Swans, more particularly those on the Thames.
In course of time, tame Swans, at any rate those on the Thames,
came to be regarded as a sort of appanage of kings. Certain
flocks were to be called royal, but besides this the King was
legally entitled to put in a claim to Swans on other rivers, so
that the Swan was, in a sense, like the Sturgeon, dubbed a
royal perquisite. This being so, no subject could legally
have property in one, even on his own stream, except by
special grant, or by getting a licence from the Master swan-
herd. Swan-marks, however, called in law Latin Cygninota —
seem to have been freely granted, and these usually consisted
of one or more indentations cut in the skin of the beak with
a sharp knife, f These incisions or notches took a variety of
shapes and forms — annulets, chevrons, crescents, swords or
crosses — or, according to Yarrell, they might be some device
produced from the heraldic arms of the owner. % There are
said to have been nine hundred such marks, which I suppose
included a hundred for Norfolk, for at least that number
might be reckoned for that county alone. It must have
been difficult to avoid having duplicates among so many,
or always to identify marks possessing a general resemblance,
even when helped by a few holes punched in the webs of
the feet, but perhaps this was not important where Swans
belonged to different streams.
The Swan as Food. — Attention has already been drawn
(p. 109) to the estimation in which the Mute Swan was held
* " English and Folk-names of British Birds," p. 253.
j See Illustration given on p. 71.
i " British Birds," III., p. 123.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 111
for its edible qualities, and further evidence might easily be
produced of the demand for them on any great occasion.
We have a notable instance of it in the feast of the Serjeants
of the Inner Temple, which was a very elaborate occasion in
London in 1532. The good things provided are enumerated
in Stow's " Survey of London,"' and again in Sir William
Lugdale's " Origines Judiciales," from which source we learn
that the number of Swans served was a hundred and sixty-
eight. More Serjeants' banquets took place in 1555, and at
these also about ninety-rive Swans were brought to table. A
fattened Swan was occasionally spoken of as a franked Swan,
the word " frank " signifying an inclosure in which animals
were fed,* but the word does not seem to be met with in con-
nection with the Norwich Swan-pit to be mentioned presently.
Lincolnshire and Norfolk Swan-rolls. — Although the
largest swannery in England was at Abbotsbury, in Dorset-
shire — and the oldest, for it was granted to an ancestor of
the present Earl of Uchester on the dissolution of the monas-
teries — there were probably nowhere a greater number of
Swans maintained than in Lincolnshire. In this county the
inhabitants of Crowland were exempted from the restrictions
imposed in the reign of Edward IV., on their petition setting
forth that their town stood " all in marsh and fen," and that
they had great " games " of Swans, by which the greatest
part of their relief and living was sustained.! It is easy to
understand how valuable the big birds must have been in a
district where neither corn nor cattle were too abundant.
The produce of meres and rivers was what the fenfolk
of Lincolnshire had to rely on for their maintenance. Accord-
ingly some very elaborate regulations were in force for the
protection of Swans, of which the most important are to be
found in a document concerning the river Witham, which
bears date 1570.$ This old deed or ordinance, proclaimed
at a swan-herd's court, or a "swan-moote," which is stated
to have been taken from a still older ordinance by one
Matthew Nayler, who was perhaps bailiff of the rivers,
* As in the " Records of Lydd," p. 116 (N.F. Ticehurst).
f 6 Rot. Pari. 260, as given by Manning.
% For particulars of this ordinance see " Archaeologia," 1812 (XVI., p.
153).
112 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
contains eighteen clauses, and its composition is of a very
stringent character. To begin with, it puts the penalty
for destroying a Swan's nest, or killing a Swan as high
as five pounds, nor was anyone to be allowed to set
nets or snares, or shoot with a hand-gun or crossbow
on the river in the summer, or even cut reeds within forty
feet of a Swan's nest, so precious were they held to be.
Another roll of about 1541 forbids any unauthorised person
even to carry a swan-hook (which was a crook used for catching
the cygnets)* ; while by a third ordinance it is enacted that
any man, whosoever he be, that killeth any Swan with dog
or spaniel shall forfeit to the King forty shillings, f
Norfolk institutions also jiossessed their Swans and
swan-rolls, of which various curious particulars, collected
bj' Stevenson, are given in that author's " Birds of Norfolk. "J
I have lately had an opportunity of examining one of these
swan-rolls, which has long been in the family of Blofeld, of
Hoveton Broad. It is on vellum and is in good condition.
Together with another roll, of somewhat less interest, it was
exhibited to the Society of Anticpiaries by Mr. William Mint,
in whose opinion its date may be approximately fixed at about
1530, which is earlier than the Witham roll.§ Mr. Mint finds
fifty-seven distinct beak marks, clearly executed and with
owner's names, and this is inclusive of five priories and two
monasteries, viz., St. Olive's, Carrowe, Hyngham, Bromerton,
Norwich, Langley and St. Bennet's. The Swan's heads are
drawn as if looked at from above, as in the Witham roll.
Another parchment roll (or rolls) of 1566, with about three
hundred Swan's heads depicted on them, each one with a
distinctive mark, was knocked clown at Dawson Turner's
sale of MSS. for £2 5s., and is no doubt the same alluded
to by Stevenson as containing swan-marks used on the rivers
Waveney and Yare. || It is now in the British Museum. ^[
A few other swan-rolls are mentioned by Stevenson, but these
relics of antiquity appear in some cases to have been sold or
stolen, or at any rate to be not forthcoming.
* " Archaeological Journal," 1850, p. 302.
t Idem, 1847,' p. 428.
t Vol. III., pp. 102-111.
§ " Proc. Soc. Antiquaries, 1905," Vol. XX.
|| " Birds of Norfolk," Vol. III., p. 110, note.
1 Add. MS. 23732.
1. THE PRIORY OF NORWICH.
2. THE ABBEY OF ST. BENNETT'S.
3. THE PRIORY" OF CARROW.
114 EARLY ANNALS OR ORNITHOLOGY
Norwich lies at the junction of two rivers, and its citizens
of the fifteenth century had numerous Swans, and valued
them highly. This we can gather from the pages of our
famous local historian, Francis Blomefield, whose work is
partly based on the collections of an earlier antiquary named
Le Neve. Blomefield has a good deal to say on the subject ;
he tells us that in 1482 a statute for the qualification of swan-
marks was made* " upon which statute an account of all the
swan-marks in this county [of Norfolk] was taken and entered
in a roll, which was renewed in the year 1598 "
DC
1. the canon's mark. 2. binknorth's mare. 3. THE prioress's mark.
Neither the original of 1482 nor that made in 1598 is any
longer in existence, as far as Stevenson could make out,
but I understand that a modern copy of the 1598 roll on
paper is in the possession of Mr. J. E. Harting, who has quoted
it in an article in the "Zoologist," where he treats of the old
terms "Cob" and "Pen" formerly applied to the male and
female Swans, f Also a modern swan-roll, beautifully executed
in 1846, which may be in part a co-py, is preserved in the
Norwich Museum, and from this source the three heads shown
on page 113 have been taken.
* By Edward IV., supra, p. 82.
| " Zoologist," 1895, p. 372.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 115
The other illustration represents three ancient swan-marks
figured in Thomas Martin's "History of Thetforcl" (1779), and
known as the Canon's mark, Binknort h s mark, and the Prioress s
mark, which are not without interest for Norfolk antiquaries.
The Swan-pit at Norwich. — There has been for a very
great number of years a pit for fattening Swans at the back
of some ancient almshouses in St. Helen's Parish at Norwich.
The useful researches of Mr. J. C. Tingey among the muniments
of the city of Norwich have proved that this pit or pond was
in existence in 1487, in which year a payment was ordered to
be made to one William Bylney " pro custoclia cignorum" at St.
Giles's Hospital, which was the name of these almshouses.*
Although there is little demand for Swans now, this pit
is still supplied nearly every season by means of an August
swan-npping expedition on the Yare, in which several boats
sometimes take part, their object being to drive the cygnets
into dykes and ditches, where they can be caught. The
phrase " swan-upping," which sounds rather puzzling to the
uninitiated, means the taking up of the young Swans; thus,
of the swan-herds of a certain river, it is fixed by an old
ordinance that they " shall up no Swannes."
The ancient belief that Swans hatch best when there
is thunder about has long held its own in Norfolk, and is
probably not without some foundation. Hixon thought that
the sultry weather which precedes a tempest would hasten
the hatching of the eggs, and that may be so.f
Shakespeare 's Swans. — The Swan is many times named
in Shakespeare's plaj'S, and the cygnet comes in for mention
also. Mr. Harting has treated the subject very pleasantly
in "The Ornithology of Shakespeare," J showing how appo-
site are some of the poet's allusions.
For instance, to take a passage in " King Henry VI.,"
where Shakespeare's powers of observation are indicated in
the lines :
" So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,
Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings. '§
* "Norw. Naturalists' Tr.," VI., p. 388.
j " Ornamental and Domestic Poultry," by the Rev. E. S Dixon, p. 28.
+ T.c, pp. 201-208.
§ Henry VI., Part 1, Act V., Sc. 3.
Chapter IX.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY (2nd Part).
The Sixteenth Century (2nd part) : English Household Accounts of the
Sixteenth Century. The le Straungefor Lestrange] Accounts, 1519-1578.
The le Straunges of Hunstanton. — It has not been thought
necessary to give up much space to Andrew Boorde's
" Dyetary " (? 1542), curious as it is, extracts, with a good
account of the author, being supplied in the " Bibliography of
British Ornithology" (1916-17, p. 81) by Mr. W. H. Mullens.
Boorde's work was intended to be a medical one, like Dr.
Mnffett's, which was written some fifty years afterwards, and
there is but little about birds in it. Under the heading
of " Wylde fowle " he gives his readers and patients some
promiscuous information, instructing them that "
A Woodcock is a meat of good temperance. Quails and
Plovers and Lapwings doth nourish but little, for they
do engender melancholy humours. Young Turtle Doves do
engender good blood. A young Heron is lighter of digestion
than a Crane. A Bustard well killed and ordered is a
nutritive meat. A Bittern is not so hard of digestion as is
a Heron. A Shoveler [Spoonbill] is lighter of digestion than
a Bittern. A Pheasant hen, a Moor-cock and a Moor-hen,
except they be set abroad, they be nutritive "
Mr. Mullens gives 1562 as being the year of the first dated
edition. Nor is it necessary to quote again the journal of
Peter Swave, the Dane, who visited the Bass Rock in 1535,*
nor the logs of the English navigators Hore, Parkhurst and
Gilbert, who visited Newfoundland in the sixteenth century
(a.d. 1556, 1578, 1583), all of which are printed at length in
Hakluyt.-j- A naturalist can not but have a feeling of melan-
* Given in full in " The Gannet," p. 181.
f " Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries," by Richard
Hakluyt.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 117
choly in reading their description of the victualling of ships
with Penguins, i.e., Great Auks, which were in great plenty
on one or two islands.
Havoc was soon made among them, and one early voyager,
Andre Thavet (1555), tells how these simple birds could be
driven into boats " ainsi que moutons a la boucherie," with
the natural result that they were speedily wiped out of
existence.
Let us therefore turn to the wider subject of Household
Accounts, which were generally kept by the stewards of
large establishments,* but unfortunately most of them have
perished. Among those which by a lucky chance have not
* Of this a good sample is a curious " Breviate " of directions for the
ordering of a nobleman's house in the sixteenth century, printed in the
thirteenth volume of " Archaeologia " (1800, pp. 315-389). The author,
whoever he was, names sixty-three birds, of which a few of the more
mysterious are —
Cudberduce or Cutburduk (St. Cuthbert's Duck, i.e., the Eider).
Indecoke (probably for Judecocke, elsewhere given as Jedcoke, i.e.,
the Jack Snipe).
Mullet (possibly a mistranscription for Pullet, but these latter are included
as well, from the context it appears to be a bird). At Scarborough this name
was given to the Puffin (Willughby's " Ornithology," p 325).
Bayninge (this name has already proved a puzzle to Mr. Stubbs
(" Zoologist," 1910, p. 154). It cannot be the Bittern, occasionally termed
Baytour, because that bird is separately included.) It is perhaps a diminutive,
meaning the little bay or red bird.
Kennices (also spelled Kenneces and Kennecis). Probably Chickens.
In " Richard the Redeles," written in 1 399, a poem, part of which (pass, iii.) is
in praise of the Partridge, we meet with " Kenne " in the sense of generate,
come to lite, or kindle.
Blankett (also spelled Blonkett). Tins is another puzzle : it cannot be
the Coot, called Blishone in Denmark, or the Avocet, called Brogeb-lit in
Denmark. Possibly the name Blankett means some small bird of a grey
colour, in which sense the adjective " bloncket" is used by Spenser. In the
thirteenth century blanchettum was a white woollen cloth (Swinfield, t.c,
p. 244), and we have the word blonket with that meaning in the Account
Rolls of the Abbey of Durham (printed for the Surtees Society). Mr. Jourdain
observes that Blankhane is a Swedish name for the Golden-eye Duck.
Martine (perhaps the House Martin).
Ree (Reeve, the Ruff is mentioned separately).
Petterell (the Kittiwake Gull, see Nelson's " Birds of Yorkshire," II.,
p. 692).
Cullver (Dove).
Chitte (equivalent, as Mr. Harting suggests, to May Chitt, a Sanderling).
Didaper (Grebe).
Churre (? Dunlin).
Tearne (probably Tern : in the Naworth accounts the Sea Swallow is
entered as eatable).
Golney (also spelled Goldne and Golne, probably a contraction of
Golden-eye). In Jamieson's '-Scottish Dictionary" (1808, suppl. 1825) we
have Goldeine, in 1555, and Golding, in 1600, as old Scotch names.
118 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
been lost are the Books of the le Straunges.* The le Straunges
or Lestranges, by whom Hunstanton lordship has been held
since 1100, were people of no small distinction, living at
Hunstanton, on the north coast of Norfolk, about a mile
from the sea. The original mansion of the le Straunges is
known to have been built at the latter end of the fifteenth
century, but very little of what must have been a noble
edifice exists now. In 1834 it was more perfect, Mr. 1).
Gurney being able to describe it as surrounded by a moat,
with stew-ponds for fish, and entered by an imposing gateway.
A picture, drawn by Robert Blake some time prior to 1823,
shows what it was like. Unfortunately, in 1853 this venerable
structure was much injured by fire, when the ancient
banqueting hall and eighteen other rooms were destroyed.
The cut gives the eastern front as it is now, and the bridge
* The spelling of le Straunge in preference to Lesfcrange has been
adopted, by Mr. Hamonle Strange's advice, as being the form inmost general
use at the time when these sixteenth-century Accounts were penned.
120 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
across the moat ; the central portion as shown contains what,
in the sixteenth century, was the Guard room, with the Priest's
chamber above it. The Accounts, which are really house-
keeping books, run from 1519, two years after Sir Thomas le
Straunge* had succeeded his cousin, to 1578, when Hamon le
Straunge was in possession. It is now eighty-four years since
a part were printed in the " Archaeologia "f by Mr. D. Gurney,
who supposes some of them to have been written by the
steward, some by Sir Thomas's personal servant (who in 1549
was Eustace Rolfe), and one or two by Lady le Straunge herself,
as for instance such entries as " when you went a-hawking with
my uncle, Roger Woodhous," or " to play at cards with my
son CressenV It is to behoped that these singular Accounts,
of which at present only selections, amounting to about
one-third of the whole, have been published, may some day
see the light in their entirety.
A few years ago Mr. Hamon le Strange, the late
owner and representative of this ancient family, carefully
indexed the four paper volumes containing these household
notes, and, with this useful aid to work by, he has been able to
look up many references to birds and fishes which are not in
Daniel Gurney' s abridgment in the "Archaeologia." The
majority of the birds here named are not what we now call
game, nor do they appear to have been regarded in that light, or
to have been captured by the family and their friends for the
sake of sport. They were looked on as a part of the produce
of the country, to be netted, snared, or shot with the crossbow,
either by le Straunge's paid keepers or by any other fowlers,
and in the latter case they were paid for when brought to the
buttery door in the same way as fish, pork and vegetables, and
entered in the house-book by the housekeeper. In the remarks
which follow, all these, with the dates which rightly belong to
them, as fixed by Mr. le Strange, have been taken account of.
The month and day are placed in square brackets, intended
to indicate that they are not in the original manuscript books,
* Walter Rye, who gives many genealogical particulars of the Lestranges
in his "Norfolk Families" (1913, p. 477), states that this knight was
Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII. at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The
preparations for this great occasion appear in the Accounts for 1520.
f Vol. XXV., 1834.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 121
where in most cases disbursements are entered under weeks
calculated from the last festival. It will be seen that a great
many records of birds additional to those in the printed
Accounts can be cited, and three more species can be added,
the Gull, the Godwit and the Scoter Duck. The entries of
such an important species as the Great Bustard, hitherto
supposed to be only two, are also shown by Mr. le Strange to
be eight, while the number of Cranes, instead of being five, is
at least twenty-eight.
It certainly cannot be said that justice has ever been done
to the zoological aspect of these old Norfolk Accounts, although
they are often quoted in the first two volumes of Stevenson's
" Birds of Norfolk " and have formed the subject of a short
hut valuable article by the late Mr. T. Southwell in the
•'Transactions of the Norwich Naturalists' Society."*
Birds brought to Hunstanton Hall. — In the eyes of a
naturalist, the birds are the great feature of these Accounts ;
forty-two species are enumerated, and all but two of them
can be at once identified. Some species are repeated several
times, and anything may be comprised in the general term of
Wild-fowl. The Mallard would naturally be the most abundant,
and accordingly it is brought in by the useful fowlers very
many times, while the Swan — tame ones, it is to be pre-
sumed—the Pheasant and the Plover each come to the house
repeated^, and the Curlew, Redshank and Stint not much
less often. Here it may be remarked that the w-ord Plover is
somewhat vague, not only in its use in these le Straunge
Accounts, but wherever it occurs in bills of fare. What leads
to some confusion is that in the succeeding century Sir Thomas
Browne {circa 1662) applied the name Green Plover to what we
now kriow as the Golden Plover as did Merrett in 1666 and
Ray in 1676, a nomenclature which would have been copied
by others. f When Thomas Pedderwas sent to Walsingham to
* Vol. I., 1870.
f The Pewit (Vanellus vulgaris) is given by Ray under the appellation of
Lapwing or Bastard Plover (" Ornithology," p. 307), the latter term denoting
something inferior or worthless, yet neither of these names occurs in the
lo Straunge papers.
In Gage's "Antiquities of Hensrave in Suffolk," we meet with
"bastard" among the household accounts, but only in one entry: —
"Octobpr, 1572. To Damon the cater[erj for iij dosen. bastard plovers
vijs viiji — for ij dosen larks xijd.
122 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
buy Plovers and Rhine wine, and again when Barnaby Bryse
rode to the French Queen with Plovers, and had two shillings
for his trouble, it was, we may assume, Lapwings that are
meant. Once only does Mr. le Strange find them specified :
" 1548 [November 15] It m a gren plover j [penny]." But
where the name Plover is associated with Stints and other
shore birds, as in the case of gifts from the Vicar of Tliornham
(a parish adjacent to the sea), who was a somewhat frequent
contributor,* it is very possible that the Golden Plover is
intended.
Among so many items it is difficult to know which to
begin with. The first one of a natural history character
which I come across is " C C & di. of Whyte heryng "
(" Archaeol.," p. 417). A white herring generally implies a
fresh herring, but so many as 250 must have been pickled,
and were probably in a barrel.
The herrings are followed by six Geese brought by a
woman from Yngaldesthorpe, doubtless tame Geese. Then
come some chickens and a peck of oatmeal, and on the next
page " Itm pd. for Sethyng a Pykerell which my Mr. had to
ye Abbeye " — that is for boiling a pike. Pykerell or Pickerel
was a common name for a small pike in various parts of
England.
The Geese fetched to the mansion seem to have been
generally tame Geese, sometimes spoken of as Green Geese,
that is to say grass-fed Geese, which have come off a pasture.
A Wild Goose night have been a tough morsel, and is only
specified occasionally.
The Brent Goose was no doubt a common bird in the
Wash then, as it is still, and would have been reckoned more
palatable. Accordingly it is not surprising that Mr. le Strange
is able to give nine references to this species, which are here
subjoined, with the dates as supplied by him, most of Avhich
come in mid-winter : —
1520 [January 15] ii dussen byrdys and a brant of store.
1523 [December 1] ooivj- wylde goose and oon brante.
1526 [January] Paid to a shepherd of Hecham for a wylde-
goos, iii brantes, a spowe and a redshanke xvi d .
* " Archaeologia," Vol. XXV., p. 422.
f "One " is often spelled " oon " in the Accounts.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 123
1527 [November 10] Paid to the blacksmith of Hecham for
a brant e.
1534 [February 1] a brant kyllyd with y e gonne.
1543 [December 1] oon wyldgoose, oon brant, store.
1544 [January] Brought into ye ketchyng the xvii of January
a malard, and ii brannts of Cansellar's kylling.
1550 [November 25] a brantt & a mallard.
[Nov. 26th] conys vi d ., a brannte store.
The Wild Swan is only specified once. " Sonday. It™,
a swamie and ij malards kylled with y e crosbowe,'" but
tame Swans and cygnets, some'.imes spelled "synettes,'" are
mentioned, and once or twice the taking of them at
" broad-water," a sheet at Holme which is still undrained.
No doubt they constantly appeared on the board with
other viands.
There does not seem to be any passage referable to the
Scaup, the Pintail, or the Pochard, although one would have
expected them to have had separate designations, nor is
the Sheld-Duck. which is a common species in the Wash,
alluded to.
Mr. le Strange has drawn attention to two entries of
"cockle ducks " in the unpublished Accounts, which it is to be
presumed were Scoters, as these birds are common in the Wash
and will eat small cockles, as well as mussels.
1537. [December] code dokes & sepys iii s .
1538. [October 20] Item, paid to John Syff for a wood-
cock, a spowe and a cokell doke, iii d .
The Wigeon has always had a good reputation for the
table, but whether the following entries are strictly limited to
what we now know as Wigeon may be doubted. According
to the extracts kindly supplied by Mr. le Strange, the name
occurs seven times in the unprinted Accounts and twice in
the printed.
1522. [Dec. 21] a wydgyn, a tele & a redschanke, iii' 1 .
1527. [Dec. 29] vi sepys, a spowe, ii redshanckes & a
wydgyn, x d .
1533. [Jan. 25] a wydgyn kylled with the gonne.
1534. [Nov. 28] To John Syffe for a wygen.
[Dec. 27] To Steven Percy for ix wigens & 1 curlewe
124 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
1536. [Dec. 4] Item paid for vii teles, iv wydgyns, ii
malards, iiii spowes, & a dussen & di [18] smalle byrdes
iii [shillings].
[Dec. 24] iv wyggyns.
1551. [Feb. 22] For a malard, iv wygges.
xxiiij of Febru. It m a qrt of Mutton — ij wyggins.
Neither of these six Norfolk spellings is discoverable in
" The Boke of Kervynge " (printed 1508), where we have the
earliest mention of the species, as a " Wegyon." Forty years
afterwards we find William Turner spelling it Wigene, which in
1570 had got back to Wigion, and at the present day to Wigeon.
Saunders gives "Easterling " as an old Norfolk name for the
Wigeon,* possibly quoting from Sheppard and Whitear's
list (Linnean Soc, 1826), but I have never met with it,
and it certainly is not taken from the le Straunge Accounts.
The only other Ducks which are specified in the Accounts
are the Mallard and Teal, which were doubtless more abundant
than now, but " wyldfowle " is often heard of, which may
have included other species. Once we meet with the ex-
pression " wyld malards at lid. the pece," so perhaps some
of those elsewhere mentioned were tame ones. Teal were no
doubt pretty common everywhere in Norfolk, a county so
well suited to them. Teal is spelled in several ways — tealle,
teille, tele, tee], tea'.e : a significant entry in 1540 is " iii mal-
lards & xiiii teelles for to entre yo r hawkes withall." These
must have been Peregrines about to be trained for hawking
at the brook, but the Goshawk was also sometimes used for
Wild Duck.
The Spowe or 8 foe. — With regard to the shore-frequenting
Waders there are a great many entries. One which at
once bespeaks attention is variously called spowe, spoe, spooe,
and spoiv. These names, which may all refer to the same
species, come six times into the printed Accounts, and more
than a dozen times, as I learn from Mr. le Strange, into the
imprinted. November and December are the months when
this unknown bird was oftenest obtained, but in 1538 six are
brought in in September, and twelve in October, on one day.
This name, which is evidently onomatopoeic, and almost
identical with the Norwegian "spove," as remarked by Dr.
* Yarrell, " B.B.," 4th edition, IV., p. 400.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 125
Ticehurst, as well as with the Swedish "spof " (a Curlew),
was provisionally assigned to the Whimbrel by my father as
long ago as 1846.* The fact that " spoi " is the common
name of the Whimbrel in Iceland, as pointed out by Prof.
Newton in " Iceland, Its Scenes and Sagas "f further
confirms his identification.
Another old English appellation for the Whimbrel,
perhaps chiefly a book name, was Brue or Brewe, which was
general in the seventeenth century. t. This name does not
come into the le Straunge or any other Norfolk accounts, and
is certainly not used in Norfolk, where at the present day the
Whimbrel is commonly termed a May-bird. Stone-Curlews
are not mentioned, nor do we get the names Yarwhelp,
Yelper or Barker, which might be looked for in an east
coast list of birds. Neither is there any bird's name which
can be assigned to the Glossy Ibis, a species supposed,
though upon very slender foundation, § to have been once
abundant enough in the Wash to be called the Black Curlew.
There are two entries of Dotterel, which may be taken
as referring to Charadrius morinellus : " 1520 to Wat Dockyng
for iij dottereUs iij d " (p. 443), and again " [April 28th, 1527]
It™ to Blogge of Walsyngham for xxiv dotterelles ii s ."
Walsingham is about four miles from the sea, and sixteen
from Hunstanton, quite a likely place for these birds.
Ten Dotterel, which were killed between April 29th and
May 9th, 1548, were at that time of the year most likely to
have been C. morinellus.
On the other hand, two more entries under the same
name — in one of which forty-eight Dotterel with Godwits, and
in the other six Dotterel with Stints, are brought in — probably
mean the Ringed Plover, while the se- or sea-dotterel, which
is occasionally distinguished in the Accounts, may very likely
have been the Turnstone.
The Oystercatcher would naturally not be entered under
that designation, which is as modern as it is inappropriate.
Under its older and more sensible name of Sea-pie, or as
* " Zoologist," Vol. IV., p. 1323, and again, 3rd series, II., p. 289.
| Orn. : 15.
% Ante, p. 89.
§ See " British Birds," Mag., V., p. 307.
126 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
it is here written, " sepy," it comes three times into the
Accounts, e.g., when in December 1527 three Geese and six
Sepys are charged at sixpence. In the printed accounts it is
mentioned once.*
Of the Knot or " knatte " there are a good many entries.
As many as forty come in once (p. 107), and another time
it is four Knots, three Redshanks, " & vi grete [great]
byrds," whatever that may mean.
Woodcock and Snipe. — No bird is oftener alluded to than
the Woodcock, whose merit for the spit was well known.
This is one of the very few British birds which has not been
provided with a string of provincial manes. It is par excel-
lence the bird of the woods, and has been so looked upon ever
since the Saxons named it wudecoec or wudu-coc — an appella-
tion which, or its equivalent, is given it in many countries. f
Especially numerous are the entries in 1548, in which year
Mr. le Strange finds that sixty-eight were brought to the
house, of which fifty-six were between October 20th and
November 1st ; probably most of them were caught with
horsehair nooses.
The Snipe % is mentioned eight times, as appears by
the following entries, which have been extracted by Mr. le
Strange : — ■
1520. [IS November] To Raff Ryches of Holme for
ij Snypes ■ i. d
1523. [18 January] To Robert Barker for iiij
teles, a Woodcocke & viij.
Snypes vj.' 1
* P. 470. Apparently it was not considered very eatable, yet we meet
with it sometimes, as in the " Records of Lydd " (1541), in the " Household
Accountof The Princess Elizabeth" (1551-2), and in The Naworth Accounts
(begun in 1612).
■f Common as is the Woodcock at the present day, there must have been
a time when it was far more abundant in England, where, though always
looked upon as proper food, its money-value in the sixteenth century was
small. Taking the Northumberland household book as a fair standard, we
find them only rated at a penny in 1512, and in the le Straimge papers two-
pence is the highest price.
| They appear in other Household Accounts. Thorold Rogers, in his
work on prices, before quoted, puts Snipe at fivepence or sixp?nce the dozen
in 1555 {to-, IV.. p. 344), at eightpence in 1591, anl at no less than four
shillings in 1594 (V.. p. 369), but in this case there must have been something
exceptional.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 127
1523. [15 November] To Stephyn Percy for a
Woodcocke, a grey Plou 1 ',
and a Snype iij. d
1534. [19 December] To Carston of Thornham, for
iiij Curlewes & for Snype iii. ix. d
[20 January] Jim v. Snyppys.
[21 „ ] Jhnv. Snyppys of gist.*
1541. [9 January] To John Syff for Stynte and
Snype ij. o. d
154S. [11 November] For a Curlewe, a Tele, & a
Snyppe ix. d
The names of shore-birds generally occur in the Accounts
together, as if there had been a catch received from the nets.
To take an instance, " a curlewe, dosyn Knotts, a dosyn
Redschanks & Stynts, ij Teals " : i.e., twenty-seven birds are
brought in, for which the fowler goes away with two shillings
in his pocket.
Either Avocets were rare, or, what is more likely, were
not considered very good to eat, for they do not come into
the le Straunge Accounts, or into any other house-books of
English fare, unless indeed they are meant by the occasional
entry of a " White Plover." My father was more inclined to
identify the White Plover with the Grey Plover, t a solution
not altogether satisfactory, for in autumn there is little or
nothing white about this species. The name spelled " whyte,"
or " whit," occurs four or five times, with those of other
shore-birds.
Of the Grey Plover, Mr. le Strange finds one mention : —
1523. [November 15] " for a Woodcocks a grey plou r
& a Snype . . . iij d."
The ffedowe or ffeddew. — The Godwit, presumably the Bar-
tailed species, comes four times into the unpublished Accounts
under its obsolete name of "ffeddowe" or "ffeddew," a name
latinised by William Turner in 1544 (" De Avibus," p. 44),
and by Gesner in 1555, as Fedoa. The Godwit is a bird
which has had a good many designations, but this is the
most curious of them, and unfortunately its meaning is lost. J
* Gist, or gyste, %vas a payment in lieu of rent.
f See Stevenson's " Birds of Norfolk," II., p. 103.
I "Dictionary of Birds," p. 248.
128 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
There may be some connection between Fedoa and the name
Doe-bird, which, as pointed out by Mr. Harting, is in common
use for the Godwit in the United States.*
1520. [January 1] Item paid to John Cawston for
a curlewe and a ffeddowe, vii d.
1537. [May 6] Item paid to him [John Syff] for iiij
ffedours, viij d .
1550. [December 17] Item paid for a ffeddew, iij d .
1550. [Dec. 19] Item paid for iii ffeddewes, viii d.
This ends the shore-frequenting species, but there are
still sundry entries of " grete byrds " and " litell byrdes,"
which are not to be identified. In one place we read of
" a spowe & iii grete byrdes," in another of " ii curlewes &
other small byrdes," in another of " v teles & x litill byrdes."
All these may have been from the shore, but in one
passage where " byrds " come between chickens and eggs,
and that in the month of June, something domestic would
seem to be intended.
The Great Bustard. Nine Drought to the Hall. — There is a
good deal to be learnt from these old paper books about the
Great Bustard, which held out in Norfolk after it had become
extinct in every other county. It is true that it is only named
twice in the Accounts in the " Archaeologia," but these are
very incomplete. In the unprinted Accounts there are six
other mentions of the Bustard, which — as extracted by
Mr. le Strange, with the dates — must be given in full : — -
1520. [April 29] Item, a pygge, ij capons & a busterd
of gist.
1527. [April 23] Itm., a bustard & iij mallards kylled
with ye crosbowe.
[July 11] A crane & a busterd kylled with ye
crosbowe.
[November] It. viij malards, a bustard & j
hernsewe kylled wt ye crosbowe.
1528. [January 1] viij malardes a bustard & j
heronsewe kylled with ye crosbowe.
1537. Itm. in reward the xxv day of July to Baxter's
servant of Stannewyk for bryngging of ij yong busterds ij d.
* See Nnttall's " Manual of the Ornithology of the United States " (II.,
p. 174), and Samuels's " Birds of New England " (p. 461).
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 129
1540. Itm. in reward the viijtli day of May to a ffelawe
that brought a busterd from the parisshe prest of Burnham
called Sir Raff, iiij d.
1543. [September 23] Itm. of Canseller's killyng oon
busterd & iiij cranes whereof iij Cranes [were] given oon to
Sir Roger Townshend another to Sir Ric[hard] South and the
thred to my lady Hastinges.
1548. [September 16] Itm j bustarde.
Of these entries, the fifth has the most importance for
the naturalist, which chronicles the bringing of two young
Bustards. Most likely they were chicks caught by hand,
and not too easily, we may be sure, for they learn to
run very quickly. As the Bustard only lays two or three
eggs, two would be a clutch.* These youngsters came
from Stannewyk, also spelled Stanneugh, now known as
Stanhoe, about eight miles from Hunstanton : it is the
same parish referred to in Richards' " History of Lynn "f
as a locality harbouring Bustards. It w r ill be observed that
one of the Bustards in the above list was killed in January,
this was undoubtedly a migrant, which may have been
driven from the continent by hard weather ; two more
were killed in April, one in May (near the sea), one in
July and two in September.
These dates are all plain, and quite coincide with what
we have long known about the habits of the Bustard.
It was evidently a species which, like the Norfolk Plover,
summered in Norfolk and Suffolk, and went south with a host
of other migrants about October. Any which in winter
temporarily took the place of the breeding-race were not
natives, but migrants from Europe. It is to be remarked that
the first entry here quoted — that of April 1520 — is really
entitled to stand as the first record of this noble species in
Britain, for the Northumberland Household Book, begun in
1512, which has generally had that credit, is merely a statement
of what birds were suitable for principal feasts at Wresil
Castle, and does not give the actual captures of the Bustard,
* Colonel Willoughby Verner tells me that in Spain Bustards will lay
four eggs if undisturbed.
t Vol. I., p. 196.
K
130 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
or any other birds.* The truth is the sixteenth-century records
of the Bustard are very few in number, which point to its
having been confined to a limited number of localities. f
The Crane. — Another typical East Anglian species in
days of yore, the Crane, was a bird of the fens, not of the
plains like the Bustard and Norfolk Plover. We do not hear
of it as a Norfolk bird before about 1476, and then incidentally
from one of the Pastons, who acknowledges " a brawn and a
crane " from a friend at Reepham.$ It is not likely that it
was rare in those days, but more will be said of its status in
East Anglia as a breeder in another chapter.§ It comes five
times into the Accounts printed in the " Archaeologia," but
Mr. le Strange has found twenty-three additional records in
those which are unprinted.
1519 [Jan. 2] To Thomas Bloye for a crane ij \i\] d .
[ ,, 30] To Thomas Bloye for a crane, ij spowes
ij s . ix d .
[Oct. 23] To Bloye for a crane & vi. plouers xx d .
[Nov. 21] A crane of gyste.
1525 [ „ 12] To Clifton for a crane xx''.
1527 [July 11] A crane and a bustard kylled wt. ye
crosbowe.
[Dec. 15] A crane kylled wt. ye erossbowe.
1528 [Jan. 12] „ Kyled with the crosbowe.
[ „ 14]
1533 [Sept. 25] „ vi d .
[ ,, 28] A goos & a crane kylled with the gon.
[Dec. 14] A crane kylled wt ye gunne.
1536 [Nov. 21] Three cranes from the fouler of
Tichewell [on the coast], v s . & vi*.
1537 [Jan. 14] One crane, xvi (i .
[Dec. 23] ,, ,, & ii geese ii s . viii' 1 .
1538 [Sept. 15] „ „ xx*.
[Oct. 13] Two cranes, ii s . ii'*.
* Mr. N. F, Tioehurst has supplied a still earlier record from the
Chamberlain's Books of the City of Canterbury, where, under date 1480-81,
there is found among other entries. " . . . . Item pro uno Bustardo
xvirf." (9th Report Historical MSS. Commission, 1883, p. 136.)
f See p. 173.
% Historical Manuscripts Com., 12th Report, p. 11.
§ See p. 164.
1540
[Oct.
27]
1543
[Sept.
23]
1548
[Oct.
22]
1550
[Dec.
8]
[Dec.
15]
[ „
28]
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 131
One crane, ii*.
Four cranes killed by Canseller [the
knight's keeper].
One crane.
One crane iii s .
Of these Cranes, two are stated to have been killed with
the gun, and four in 1527 and 1528 with the crossbow, and
this is about the last occasion on which we hear of the cross-
bow, which was falling into disuse. Between 1528 and 1533
the Crane is not recorded,* and then we read of one " killed
with the gun " on September 28th. It is to be noted that
three were brought in on one day in November, and four
on a single day in September. As regards the months, one
Crane was got in July, seven in September, five in October,
five in November, six in December, and five in January.
Its status in North Norfolk therefore was evidently that of a
winter bird, although possibly the July example was a breeder
and the five in September young birds. For fourteen of them
no price is quoted, implying that they were procured on the
Knight's own manors, which doubtless included extensive
marshes at Hunstanton and Holme.
The Spoonbill. — That the Spoonbill comes into these
Accounts has not generally been recognised,")" but as a matter of
fact it is there entered, seven times as " popelere " or " popelar,"
and three times as " shovelarde." Popeler, like Shoulard or
Shovelard, was a mediseval name for the Spoonbill, but Shove-
lard is much the more frequent of the two in documents.
Yet Popeler must be the earlier designation, for it occurs
in connection with Norfolk in 1300, as poploj, a contraction
for poplorum ("Norwich Nat. Tr.," VI., p. 159). Both
names refer to the spoonlike shape of the beak in this species.
The following passages, as supplied with the dates as cal-
culated by Mr. le Strange, include twenty-three Spoonbills,
all of which were most likely " branchers " or young ones,
* But this does not necessarily imply that none were brought in, but
only that the accounts are imperfect, also between the same dates no Bustards,
Spoonbills, Snipe, Wigeon or Godwits are entered.
f Though alluded to in " The Birds of Norfolk " (Vol. III., p. 135, noteK
132 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
in which state they were considered to be prime eating.
They had to be secured by means of a hook on a pole, in
the same way as young Herons, and the two species may
have bred together. It will be observed that the entries run
from April 30th to July 13th, and this is very suggestive
of a breeding-place not far off, and probably it was on the
estate, for in every case the Spoonbills are stated to have
been of store.
1523. [April 30] Item iij popeleres of store.
[May 4] Item v herns and a popelere of store.
[May 8] Item ii popeleres of store.
1533. [June 1] Item iiij cople of rabbettes & a poplere
of store.
[June 2] Item ii popeleres & iiij cople of rabbettes
of store.
[June 8] Item ii popeleres & iii rabbettes of store.
[July 9] Item iii hemes & iiij popeleres of store.
[July 10] Item iii hemes & a popeler of store.
1543. [May 20] Item spent iii shovelards that cam from
thens [Hunstanton], — store.
1548. [July 7] Item ij shovelardes.
[July 13] Item ij shovelardes.
It may have been from a Hunstanton breeding settlement
of Spoonbills that Cardinal Wolsey's table was once supplied,
for Mr. E. M. Beloe has discovered an entry in the " Hall-
Book " of King's Lynn,* setting forth that when Wolsey
came there in August 1521, he and his retinue were presented
with three "shovelardes" (i.e., spoonbills), three Bitterns,
ten cygnets, twelve capons, thirteen plovers, eight pike and
three tench.
The Heron. — Hems and Hernshaws are continually put
down ; the entries are too numerous to quote, but it may be
observed that the latter name is not always restricted to
young ones. Herons were reckoned to be of considerable
account on a country property, as they are now, although for
a different reason. Hawking them was, as Mr. Harting
observes, thought to be " a marvellous and delectable pastime,"
and in some of the treatises upon falconry many pages are
* No. III., fol. 319. Tha passage is printed in Hillen's " The Borough
of King's Lynn."
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 133
dedicated to this particular branch of sport. The strictness
with which Herons had been for many years protected at
their breeding-places is shown by the stringent statutes of
James the First of Scotland in 1427, and James the
Fourth in 1493, as well as by that of our Henry the
Seventh in 1504. The first of these enactments lays
clown that there was to be no shooting with hail-shot or
hand-gun within six hundred yards of a heronry, while
Henry the Seventh's Act forbade all killing of Herons except
by means of the hawk and the long bow, the more deadly
crossbow which discharged bolts being excluded. It was in
the interest of holders of manors on which herons bred
to keep the laws in force, and not allow them to lapse, but
whether this was really clone is doubtful.
Ancient tenures of land sometimes particularise the yield
of Herons, which the woods should annually afford, an asset
of no small consideration (cf. " History of Fowling," p. 212).
That they were held to be very good eating at Hunstanton
Hall is clear, and evidently the majority of those brought in
were the produce of the estate, although there is no Heronry
there nOiV.
On one page Herons and Rabbits " of store " occur five
times running (p. 483), followed by a pig and a buck of store.
This indicates pretty plainly that there was a Heronry not
far off, especially as in another place four pence is given " to
one that clymed the herons at Mr. Prattes."* Hooking clown
young Herons from the nest, or when " branchers," was the
general way of taking them.-j-
The Bittern only comes once into the le Straunge
Accounts, which is rather singular : " [April 22ni, 1527.]
Item ii buttour kylled with ye crosbowe "% somewhere on
* P. .356.
f In the " Account Book of Hurstmonceux Castle," 1643-43, com-
municated by Mr. T. B. Lennard to "T ie Sussex Archseological," there are
several references to t.ie practice of hooiing Herons.
Paid for eliming v do^on of herons.
,, making a new heron rope.
,, white leather for the heme climers use.
,, a pole to his hearne hooke.
the heron climer for eliming viii dozon & a half of herons,
eliming xxx rooks for the hawks.
1 P. 482.
134 EAELY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
the estate, where there may not have been enough suitable
swamps for this species.
Partridges and Pheasants. — Partridges are mentioned a
great many times, Pheasants not quite so often. No Pheasants
are entered after 1549, but this can hardly be because none
were procured. Partridges go on to 1548 and 1549, in
which years Mr. le Strange finds repeated entries about
them. None is stated to have been shot with the gun,
and it is obvious that they were netted. But Partridges .
and Pheasants were also a favourite quarry for the Hawks,
which accounted for a good many of them in the Hunstanton
demesne. In some places there was an idea prevalent that
the}' were more savoury when killed by a Hawk than if caught
in snares (see Willugbby's " Ornithology," p. 165).* At any
rate the patrimonial estate of the le Straunges was well
supplied with feathered game of this kind. In September
1527 the "sparhawke " accounts for twelve Partridges in four
days, which would seem to imply that there was more than
one hawking party. Again in 1530 a servant brings in twelve
Partridges on September 17th-]- and here we seem to recognise
a night's labour with the drag-net.
1536 may have been a good Partridge season, for in
Januaiy 1537 Mr. le Strange finds Mathew bringing thirty-
six Partridges on the 4th, quite a Christmas supply. No
doubt Partridges were common, but that could hardly be
said of Pheasants in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless
Pheasants were to be had for the seeking, and one Towers,
who was perhaps what we should call the gamekeejjer, seems
from time to time to have been sent in quest of them.
This is the man who was repaid on the 12th of June for
money which he had laid out at divers times, when lie went
to take Pheasants — whether with a hawk or with a net is not
stated. Money again is paid in June to a servant for bringing
three Pheasants — possibly live ones at that season of the
year, or chicks to put in an aviary.
The Quail only comes twice into the Accounts, which is
somewhat surprising, as one might have expected this little
* Because, observes Mr- Hartiucr, the head was commonly pulled off.
f P. 497.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 135
quarry, so good for the table, to have been more sought after :
1533 [September 14th] " ij ptryches & a quaylle kyllyd with
ye haukes."
1548 [April 29th] " Itm a quayle."
Pigeons and Foivls. — " Stockdowes," or as it is also
spelled, " Stockedoves," are brought in now and then, in one
place associated with two Cygnets and a " brid pye [bird-pie],''
in another with butter, eggs, and a venison pasty. These, it
is most likely, were either young Stockdoves or Woodpigeons
taken from the nest, domestic Pigeons being distinguished as
" pyggens." Certainty where Pigeons of store are named,
tame Pigeons bred upon the farm must be intended. In 1548
these latter become quite frequent, the number ordered for
the house being, as Mr. le Strange informed me, very consider-
able. In many parts of England these plunderers of grain,
as one indignant author terms the domestic Pigeons, were
getting so abundant that loud complaints began to arise*, but
it was not necessarily so at Hunstanton. Sixteenth-century
Pigeon houses were in some cases quite substantial brick
buildings, but whether there were any remains of one at
Hunstanton Hall in 1833 is not stated. Undoubtedly one
or more existed, and we also read of " ye olde douffehouse in
Fryng," another part of the estate about five miles away.
In another passage we are told of " a pound of comyng
[cummin seed] for the dowes,"^ and again of two " salt stonys "
being bought for the " dowffhouse," presumably at Hun-
stanton (p. 448). Pigeons are fond of salt, and this may
have been done to keep them at home. In that case Mrs.
Margaret Ferefreye, whom the editor supposes to have been
housekeeper,! gave the order, as William Skyppon was clerk
of the kitchen at a later date,§ or the command may have
been from the farm.
* See William Harrison's "The Description of England" (1577)
and Hartlib's "Discourse on Husbandry" (1651). Harrison says: —
" . . . . Pigeons, now an hurtful foule by reason of their multitudes,
and number of houses daillie erected for their increase (which the bowres
of the countrie call in scorne almes houses, and dens of theeues, and such like)
whereof there is great plentie in euerie farmer's yard." Sir. Mullens observes
that bowres means " boors," or farmers.
f P. 513.
} P. 424.
5 P. 559.
136 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
In another place Mr. le Strange meets with a
" dow skrapp " ; by a skrap or scrap we understand
a place for pigeons or fowls to scratch and busk in.
Again he comes across a " cowl dow " or pigeon coop,
and a " cowle for ye hens at Anmer," a manor about
eight miles away, which formed a part of the demesne.
In domestic accounts of this kind, Barn-door Fowls
naturally figure frequently, and in the Hunstanton ledgers
they are generally accounted for as " checons." Once
or twice only do we catch the name of cockerel or capon.
Every farmstead or considerable house in East Anglia
was no doubt supplied with Fowls, and especially Norfolk,
which in the sixteenth century had come a good deal
to the front.* Turkeys j and Guineafowls we could
hardly look for in the Hunstanton farmyard, but the
gaudy Peacock had long been a denizen of England,
and must by this time have been well known in
Norfolk. |
Of this species the first notice is a payment in 1520 to
the vicar of Thornham's servant for bringing a Peahen, and
three young Peahens, and six Plovers (p. 447) — twopence.
The gratuity seems a small one, but later on (p. 540) only
threepence is paid for another and a Goose thrown in to
the bargain.
Small Birds. — There is nothing about the Thrush,
nor the " Fulfer," a characteristic Norfolk word, but
Blackbirds often come in. In January 1520 four are
brought, and then six more " of store," and after that
come another six. In the thirty -ninth week of 1522
John Long and Stephen Percy bring four Blackbirds
and eight Woodcocks. Judging from other household
accounts, Blackbirds seem to have been rated a sort
of delicacy. All this tribe of birds has greatly increased
in England, and it is conceivable that four hundred
* Professor Thorold Rogers is of opinion that in 1503 Norfolk was the
second most opulent county in England.
t The first mention of the Turkey as a denizen of Norfolk is discoverable
in 1601, in " The Official Papers of Sir Nathaniel Bacon " (R. Historical Soc,
p. 220) : it soon became as common there as in other parts of England.
X Supra, p. 57, note.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 137
years ago Blackbirds were nothing like as common as they
are now ; perhaps if they had been of larger size our ances-
tors would have reckoned them as much worth catching as
Woodcocks.
Entries of Larks come repeatedly, most often in summer,
and generally for hah a dozen or a dozen. Fifty -four are
brought in on three consecutive days in June 1527, when the
Abbot of Ramsey was on a visit at the Hall. Skylarks have
always had a reputation for delicacy, so perhaps they were
especially provided in this instance for the Abbot.
Again there is an entry of fourteen Larks killed with
a Hobby in June 1533, and a fortnight afterwards twelve
more killed with a Hobby, as well as five Coots and some
Mallards taken with a Spaniel, probably when moulting
(p. 528). In the fifteenth century, Mr. Harting observes,
the Hobby was considered the hawk for a young man,
and ladies also flew the Merlin ; but this latter is not
mentioned in the Accounts.
The tenant must have been very poor who could render
no higher rent than common Sparrows, bnt in July 1533, in
default of anything better, twelve " sparouse " of gyste are
accepted, and in the same week there also come " xij sparouse,
iij herns," the latter probably nestlings, for which three half-
pence is allowed. The Sparrows also, judging from the time
of 3'ear, may have been young ones.
In July 1548, Mr. le Strange finds two dozen more Sparrows,
and two dozen more in September, presumably for eating, as
they could hardly have been bought for any other purpose,
unless it was to feed the hawks.
Seameiv. — Only one more species, the Gull, remains to
be named. Under the name of Seamew, Mr. le Strange
discovers six entries —
See mowes xid.
semmywys.
semewes.
semewys.
seebyrdes called See mewes.
semewes.
Probably these refer to the young of the Black-headed Gull,
more commonly known as a " Puit," which may have had
1536
[June
18] xxxij
1548
[July
11] ij
[ „
20] x
3 J
[ .,
22]
,,
[ „
„ ] i»j
,,
[ „
25] iiij
138 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
a breeding-place in the neighbourhood, but Gulls from the
seashore were undoubtedly sometimes eaten.*
Hawking at Hunstanton. — That hawking was freely prac-
tised on the lands appertaining to Hunstanton Hall we have
abundant evidence, nor does it look as if this was done for
the entertainment of le Straunge and his frequent visitors, so
much as for the more prosaic purpose of filling the larder. Be
this as it may, in nearly every case it seems that the Goshawk
was the species carried in the chase. It is specified by name
at least sixteen times, and we shall not be wrong in conclud-
ing that it was generally the Goshawk which is intended by
the entry " hawk " without a qualifying adjective. It goes
without saying that much attention would have to be given
to these valuable food providers, and accordingly it is not
surprising to meet with such a payment as sawing for " ye
dow house ende [pigeon cote] & board for ye hawk mewe."
The mewe was generally some handy outhouse, in which
the hawks could be kept clean and free from draughts. In
1519 there is an entry of ten shillings paid to John Maston
for mewing & keeping of the Goshawks from Chrostyde
[September 14th] unto the XVth day of November, f a liberal
consideration for two months' care.
Without doubt the Goshawk (especially a large female)
was the prime favourite in most country establishments of
this date. Their value to the family at Hunstanton Hall is
abundantly demonstrated, not only by the game which they
killed, but by the price paid when a fresh hawk was required.
Thus a new Goshawk, delivered in August 1533 (p. 550), cost
le Straunge forty shillings, and another in 1541 nearly as much,
and forty shillings, be it remembered, was a good round sum
in the days when coins were few. Although said not to be always
tractable in the training, yet to a country mansion such as
Hunstanton Hall, the Goshawk, which acted as general provider,
was more suited than the long-winged Peregrine, or the high-
priced Gyr. Especially was the Goshawk, which has great
* Doctor Muffett (1595) says: " White Ouls, (trey Gain, and Black Guls
(commonly termed by the name of Plungers and Water Crows) are rejected
of every man as a fishy meat : nevertheless being fed at home with new
curds and good corn till they be fat, you shall seldom taste of a lighter or
better meat "
t P. 4'21.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 139
speed for a short distance, adapted to rabbits, and even
the hare could not escape so impetuous a pursuer. But the
Goshawk was quite equal to taking winged game, viz., the
Pheasant, and we are told no less than thirteen times of a
Pheasant finding its way to the buttery which had been killed
by a Goshawk. Goshawks were also flown at Partridges,
which seem to have been abundant at Hunstanton. On one
page (529) Partridges, or as they are written " ptryches,"
come into the Accounts four times, nine birds altogether,
five of which at least were taken with a hawk of some kind.
On another page we have six rabbits, and two Partridges
killed with " ye sper hawke " (p. 484). This was in 1527, in
which year the trained Sparrow-hawks, if they really were
Sparrow-hawks, were very active in the early autumn,
accounting for two Partridges on August 25th, four on
September 1st, one on the 2nd, two on the 4th, and live
on the 5th, besides some rabbits.*
A female Sparrow-hawk might manage young Partridges
in August or September, but that it should be capable of
taking old ones strong on the wing and full-grown rabbits,
though possible, would show a very high degree of training.
It seems most likely that by the term " sper hawke " in these
Accounts Goshawk is more often meant. f
Some of the disbursements in connection with hawking,
in these well-kept Hunstanton books, are worth quoting.
Hawks' food, always spoken of as Hawks' meat, is often
set down, and occasionally there are expenses which have
to do with hawking excursions, and the accompanying
breakfast (p. 419). One significant entry is for expenses
" when ye went on hawkyng to Woolferton wood for fyer &
dryncke." Now we know that in after years a good Heronry
flourished at Wolferton,J and accordingly it may have been
Herons, which on that occasion were the quarry. If it were
* Dates as supplied by Mr. Je Strange.
f This receives some confirmation •from the " Survey of Cornwall "
(1602) of Richard Carew. Alluding to the real Sparrow-hawk as employed
in the sixteenth century for hawking, he remarks that she would serve to
fly little above six weeks in the year " and that only at the Partridge,
where the Faulkner and Spanels must also now and then spare her extra-
ordinary assistance ..." He evidently regarded Sparrow-hawks as too
small for this flight.
J See Morris's "Naturalist," 1852, p. 204.
140 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
so, the Knight would hardly have flown anything at them
but the Falcon, which he might have acquired locally, lor
Peregrine " eyesses " were to be obtained from Hunstanton
cliff near by.* It may have been at Wolferton Wood also that
the Spoonbills bred, but this is a mere conjecture, with nothing
to verify it, unfortunately.
One item is twopence to Thomas Pedder — the same man
who was sent for the Plovers — for a tame Mallard to lure back
the hawks in Hunstanton Marsh (p. 441). | On the same page
we read of " sekyng of ye haggard fawkon callyd Cheny " at
Christmas time, possibly so named in compliment to my lady
Cheny s (p. 440), when as much as twenty pounds were laid
out in costs. ElseAvhere we hear of Hawks' bells, most
important for the retrieving of a lost one, and of the wages
paid to Saunder the falconer, and in one place of " fyer for
the hawkys " (p. 9). Mr. Harting suggests that this should
not read fyer, but tyer, i.e., something to tire on or pull at,
when sitting on the porch or block, to keep a hawk quiet.
Nowhere is the Peregrine Falcon alluded to in the Accounts
by name, yet the wild haggard " cheny " sounds as if she
must have been one of this breed.
Any English falconer who had a Peregrine would have
called it a Falcon or Lanner, or perhaps a Gentil Falcon in those
days, the latter term being usually reserved for the female.
* Although Hunstanton Cliff, sometimes called St. Edmund's Point,
was by no means lofty, and is now only sixty feet high. Peregrine Falcons
persistently bred there for a great number of years, of which proof is given
in the " l Norwich Naturalists' Transactions" (Vol. V., p. 185). That they
were known, and their value appreciated, as far back as 1604 is also certain,
see " Norwich Nat. Tr." (IV., p. 658), for in the evidence room at Hunstanton
Hall there exists a list of falcons taken from this cliff beginning with that
year. This carefully kept falconer's list was drawn up by the Sir Hamon
Lestrange of that date, who here records that between 1C04 and 1653 he
took on the estate no fewer than eighty-seven hawks, of which sixty-live were
young ones from the nest. This eyrie is alluded to in Bishop Gibson's edition
of Camden's "Britannia," 1772 (Vol. I., p. 470). Mr. Parting has si own
that Pccordinff to Nicholas St' leman of Snettisham, a parish a few miles
awav, it ceased to exist al out 1818 (" Zoologist," li.90, p. 418).
t The luring of a lost hawk was a common practice. It is mentioned in
the Middleton Accounts, where, under date 1524, we have " ij molerdes to
hayse [i.e., to lure or train] the hawkes " (i.e., p. 368), and elsewhere allusions
to it may be met with. Tame Ducks, which were good enough for this
purpose, were to be distinguished from Wild Ducks. In the " Mimimenta
Gildhallfc Londonensis," a domestic duck is called a dunghill mallard for
distinction's sake (Roils Ed"., I., lxxxiii.), and such a fowl would have
answered the purpose of a lure.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY Ml
To these falconers Peregrine was an appellation which really
meant a hawk of foreign origin, in which sense the name Helog
Dramor is applied to this species in the Welsh language. The
truth is. the name Peregrine is a comparatively modern word,
which was very little known to the falconers of the sixteenth
century, although that great authority Turbervile docs in one
place in his " Booke of Faulconrie "* write about " the Haggart
Falcon, and why she is called the Peregrine or Haggart "f
Other Means employed for Fotvling at Hunstanton. — One
thing which is somewhat inexplicable about these careful books
is the constantly repeated formula, set down for some unknown
reason, as to how the various birds were obtained, whether
by crossbow, hawk or gun. Throughout the earlier part of
the Accounts the crossbow was the weapon most commonly
emplo^yed. The type of crossbow for fowling, of which a good
example may be seen in Norwich Museum, was fitted with a
wooden stock, and discharged metal bolts, being not much
heavier than a modem gun. With such effect did the energetic
fowlers handle their crossbows that the buttery was supplied
with three Great Bustards, two Cranes, a wild Swan, a Bittern,
a wild Goose and numerous wild Ducks. On one occasion a
Bustard, eight Mallards and a Heron, all marked as killed
with the crossbow, are brought in to the larder.
Water-dogs, here alluded to as " the spannyell," were
trained to assist in taking wild-fowl. There is one entry of
four Mallards, and another of six Mallards, and five Coots
* P. 33.
f A good deal of curious information about hawking in Norfolk and
Suffolk, at about this period and also later, has been collected by Mr. J. E.
Harting for the Norwich Naturalists' Society. See his articles entitled
Notes on Hawking as formerly practised in Norfolk " (" Trans. N. and N. N.,"
Vol. III., pp. 79-94) and " Further Notes on Hawking in Norfolk " (Vol. VI.,
pp. 248-254). Among the passages quoted by Mr. Harting in the latter
paper, not the least singular is a communication accompanying the dispatch
of a hawk, from one Jasper Metier to Sir Bassingbourn Gawdy of West
Harling in 1598. Two days ago, the writer states, he caught with some
labour this Tasslegentle [Tiercel], and afterwards found on him the Queen's
varvaile [a ring bearing Elizabeth's mark] and one Mr. Tbrogmorton's name
on the mayle [a small plate]. He desires Sir B. Gawdy to take the legal
course, which was to inform the Sheriff of Norfolk. There are some other
letters equally interesting, such as refer to the mewing of a " heroner,"
i.e., a falcon trained to herons; to an old hawk " taken with the cramp and
the quack " ; to a " Jake-marlen [Merlin] " ; to a lusty falcon, that is
" ever raking out at crows " ; and to " green geese " and ducks required
for hawkos meat.
142 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
(p. 528) being captured with a dog of this breed. Most likely
it was the spaniel's part to drive the Ducks into nets previously
laid for them, and this may have been usually in July, when
the old ones were moulting, and the young scarcely able to fly.
Nothing is said about a decoy, nor is it likely that the
estate possessed anything which deserved the name of one ;
indeed, the method of decoying fowl on the Dutch principle
by alluring them was not introduced into Norfolk until the
seventeenth century (1610—1620).* The customary way of
catching Ducks was to hustle them into a tunnel net, as shown
in an old print reproduced in Payne-Gallwey's " Book of
Duck Decoys. "f
The first bird shot with a gun was in 1533, nothing more
considerable than a Waterhen which might have been got
any day in the moat ; but very quickly the new weapon is
put to better account, and kills a Crane, two Mallards, and
a Wigeon. However, perhaps powder was scarce, for we do
not hear much more of it, nothing being shot after a Brant
Goose in 1534.
The smaller waders, such as Dunlin and Knot, would not
have been deemed worth powder and shot, or even bolts from
a crossbow ; they were evidently captured in upright nets set
near the sea, which on dark nights are a fatal trap. J Nets
of this kind have been in use in the Wash for a very long
time ; I can remember seeing them erected in lines as far back
as 1862, and they were no novelty then.§ Although they are
* The oldest East Anglian decoy of which we have any precise
particulars, situated «t Steeple, in Essex, near the month of the Black-
water, was constructed in 1713, and curious details of its working have
been given by Mr. Cordeaux and Mr. Harting. ("Field," April 6th, 1878,
and July 5th, 1879.)
t P. 5.
| Sir Thomas Browne, writing a century later, alludes to this method of
taking Knots on the Norfolk coast. We learn from the Gawdy Papers that in
1563 Knots cost five shillings a dozen and that they were commonly caught
at Terrington near Lynn (" Norwich Naturalists' Trans.," VI., p. 253).
§ The catch on December 18th, 1862, was : Dunlin 34, Knot 15,
Curlew 3, Golden Plover 3, Grey Plover 3, Oystercatcher 2, Woodcock 1,
Bar-tailed Godwit 1, Redshank 1, Great Black-backed Gull 1, Black-headed
Gull 2. These nets were for many years the property of Mr. Frank Cresswell
of Lynn, who generally placed them at high-water mark. In eleven consecu-
tive years, beginning with 1859, Mr. Cresswell took 3,693 birds, but of late
years from various causes the nets have not been so much used. The above
is given as an example of a good night's work. Illustrations of these nets are
given in Dawson Rowley's " Ornithological Miscellany " (Vol. II., p. 373).
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 143
not alluded to in the " Archaeologia," Mr. le Strange has given
me four or live entries from the unpublished Accounts which
refer to the making of shore bird-nets.
1543 [November 8th] To a woman of Thornham for a
li [i.e. a pound] of stryng for the stynt nette.
1543 [November 1 4th] To a woman for twyn for ye
stynt nett vii d .
1543 [November 26th] To a woman of Thornham for a
li of twyne for the stynt nette.
1543 [December 19th] For a stynt nette for Jokes, &
the brayding thereof viii d .
But Stint nets were not the only ones used by the fowlers,
for another entry is tenpence for twine for the Partridge net,
most likely in this instance a draw net. With this a covey
of Partridges could be encompassed at night by two men,
each holding one end of the net : the spaniel, which was
their indispensable companion, having first scented out the
whereabouts of the game. A second plan was to use them
by day with a trained Falcon aloft, which, no matter at what
height she hung, would be seen by the Partridge^, which then
squatted close in terror of their natural enemy. Another
entry communicated by Mr. le Strange runs : —
" 1540 [June 6]. It m p d the same day to Gyburn for
suche things as he haue bought vz.,* iij ffesaunt nettes & a
Cloth ij" viij d , for ij ptrich nettes v:x d , iij s hoby nettes xj d ,
for a sawe ij d ." . . . On the same page of the Accounts
Mr. le Strange finds : " It m p d the viij th day of May to
Gybson for his costs when he went a ffyssyng & a Taking
of the Hobye . . . vj d ." The " hoby " nets were perhaps
intended to catch Skylarks while the Hobby waited over-
head. The employment of a small Falcon for this kind of
sport was called " daring," and is described by Turbervile
in his " Booke of Faulconrie " (1575). A well-known
poet alludes to it when he writes, " As larks lie dar d
to shun the hobby's flight " (Dryden). In the second
entry, perhaps, the allusion may be to a Hobj'e-horse, and
not to a bird.
* Namely.
144 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
As Woodcocks were only visitants, wo should scarcely
expect to find, as in some Cumberland Accounts,* entries
of hankes of yarn, i.e., spun wool, for the cockshut net,
a device used in the west, but apparently not in Norfolk, for
taking Woodcocks in their evening flight, so le Straunge does
not seem to have had any at Hunstanton. We have entries
of " packethrede for ye haye," and " a haye of 1 fadam long "
(p. 423), which was a net for catching hares, also of " twyn
for yo 1 foxe netts "f which looks as if reynard had been
troublesome in the poultry yard.
With the spread of cereal crops, both hares and rabbits
we may presume were increasing, at all events 1,514 rabbits
were consumed in the house in less than a year. In one place
there is an entry which points to another form of sport, viz.,
2 lb. of twine " for the hunt[er] to make up his nett & to
Mason for [fish-] castyng nettes." But possibly these were
only to be used at the stew-ponds, of which some remains
are still to be seen in the park. Among the many entries
which Mr. le Strange has marked are three which refer to
Bat-fowling (or -folding), of which one runs: —
" 1543. [29 December.] Itm Spent in Wildfoule vz.,
v dosen Styntes, iij mallardes, ij ffesauntes, viii ptriches, v
spowes, j curlewe, iij Redshankes, oon Tele, ij dosen Batt
ffowling Bryddes."
Mr. le Strange did not come across any mention of a
crow-net, yet such a necessary item could hardly have been
lacking, nor are crow-boys named among the papers. Mr.
Harting has found a figure of a sixteenth century Crow-net,
which shows the type commonly used in Leonard MascalLs
" Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line" (1590).$ Every
parish had to provide itself with one, and could be fined under
the statute of 24 Henry VIII. (1533) if it were not forthcoming.
* The following is from the larderer's book of Naworth Castle in Cumber-
land. " October 23 [1624], To Robert Stapleton for hempe yarn in March
for making a drawing net [doubtless for Partridges] vs. : and for iij hankes
of yarn for a eoekshott nett at Brampton parke iijs."
The earliest reference to a cockeshot is inWynkyn deWorde's " Treatyss
of Fysshynge with an Angle."
t P. 550.
i >SVe article on "Choughs, Crows and Rooks" ("Zoologist," 1894
p. 47).
SIXTEExYTH CENTURY 145
The fact of such a law being necessary indicates that Rooks
were very numerous. Sir Thomas Browne (1665) speaks of
the great plenty of Rooks and Rook-groves in Norfolk, while
another writer of the next century observes that England has
bred more Crows than any country in Europe, no doubt
meaning to include Rooks.
Of items which bear indirectly on Natural History there
are not a few. The careful diarists put down the price of
apples and medlars, of the pasty of a stag, and the quarter
of a porpoise, of a hundred eggs, etc. The King's falconer
has his reward, and we are duly told what was paid to the
bringers of a couple of whelps, or a " yolle of fresh salmon."*
On page 420 there is an allusion to the shoeing of a
" stawkyng horse." The stalking horse appears to have
been in great favour for approaching fowl, and even a stalk-
ing ox, behind which the fowler could screen himself, and
so get within short range.
As a sample of the many good things which passed
through the buttery door into the hands of the housekeeper
at Hunstanton Hall, here is the well-kept inventory of one
week : — f
Sunday, [November 1519.] One Goose, a Pig, 6 Conies.
6 Plovers, 2 Mallards, 12 Birds [not named].
Monday. Two Geese, 2 Pigs, 1 Crane, 7 Conies, 1 Curlew,
3 " Spowes " [i.e., whimbrel], 3 Mallards.
Tuesday. One Goose, 3 Mallards, 2 Teal, 3 Conies.
Wednesday. One Pig, 1 Woodcock, 2 Conies, 2 Mallards.
Thursday. One Goose, 3 Conies, 2 Mallards.
Friday. One Codling, 10 Plaice.
Saturday. One Cod, 2 Codling, 10 Plaice, a Salmon-
Trout and half a Ling, besides Butter, Eggs, Beef, Mutton,
and Ale.
This was rather a special week, but there were many
others nearly as productive. It will be observed that four
* Mr Walter Rye observes that " yolle " is a variorum reading of jowl,
a i aw or head In that sense the word is used in the Duke of Buckingham's
Household Book, and in Russell's " Boke of Nurture " (L. 622).
f P. 426.
146
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
sorts of fish are here mentioned ; fish were largely consumed
and continually come in throughout the Accounts.*
But Hunstanton Hall, with all its many advantages, was
not free from one defect, and that was the presence of rats,
which must have been Black Rats, for Epimys norvegicus did
not come until the eighteenth century. These undesirable
visitors had found their way into the house, and in 1520 were
such a nuisance that "Peter Ratonar " — who took his name
from his profession — had to be paid twenty pence for laying
of the chambers with poison (p. 478). Again the same man,
* For the following list of the fish, etc., enumerated, I am indebted to
Mr. le Strange : —
Fish Eaten at Hunstanton.
Basse.
Bretteor Bretcocke (Brill). My father
could remember when this name,
which was possibly applied to the
Turbot as well, was in use at Wells.
In the Ivenninghail Accounts it is
spelled bmt in 1525 ("Norfolk
Arch.," 1904, p. 54).
Butte (Plaice).
Butt sprag (Sprag was used for
a young cod-fish or salmon, and
according to " The English Dialect
Dictionary," butt was a basket for
catching fish.
Cockyll.
Cod.
Cod Waxen (large Cod).
Codlyng.
Congre.
Crabbe.
Cravose (Lobster).
Eell.
Fawke (? Flounder).
Flathe (Skate).
Gurnard.
Haburdyn (Salted Cod from Aber-
deen, a town famous for curing
fish).
Haddock.
Herryng,
fresh.
full.
red.
shotten.
white.
Lampre.
Lyng.
Mackerell.
Mullett.
Muschelle.
Oyster.
Perch.
Purpose (Porpoise, often mentioned,
and reckoned as quite eatable.
Six shillings and eightpence was
paid for a whole one).
Purwvnckle.
Pyke.
Playce.
Roche.
Samon.
,, salted.
Trowght.
(During the early part of 1548
Mr. le Strange finds that over
tliirty Salmon were brought to
the house, about half of which
were salted Salmon, while the
remainder were fresh.)
Skull slyce (also spelled sculleslyes
and skulk Slyce. Probably the
Plaice, skolla and Sand-skadda
are stated to be Swedish names
for this species, and skulder
Danish. Mr. Norgate suggests
that Slyce may be equivalent to
Low German slick = mud.)
Shrymp.
Smelt.
Sole.
Spratt.
red.
Sturgyn.
Spyrlyng (Smelt).
Stoekfysshe.
Tenche.
Thornbacke.
Turbutte.
Whytynge.
Wylkes.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 147
and John Audeley, are a second time each remunerated with
twenty pence for killing rats with "ratton bayn."* It is to
be hoped that they succeeded in clearing the mansion effec-
tually of such undesirable marauders.
Few departments of English history have been less
cultivated than that relating to the household accounts of the
upper classes in the sixteenth century, which tell us about
their meals and manners, and considered zoologically often
present an aspect of very great interest. Not a few of them
were kept in eventful and troubled times — a period which
in the case of le Straunge and his family takes us through
the greater part of three reigns, ending in 1578, the year
which witnessed Queen Elizabeth's stately entry into
Norwich.
The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths.'f —
There are not many existing household accounts of the
sixteenth century on the lines of le Straunge : the most
appropriate with which to compare them are the Middleton
Accounts (Hist. MSS. Com.), and those of Shuttleworth of
Lancashire, which latter contain also some references to
falconry. About twenty-five species of Lancashire birds are
here enumerated, some of them under rather peculiar names,
viz. : the skergrys or scargrasse, which, according to Mitchell's
" Birds of Lancashire " (p. 166), was the Water Rail, thetullettej
(Ringed Plover, idem, p. 177), the curlue hilpp (VVhnnbrel,
idem, p. 200), the snipe knave (qu. Jack Snipe), the pire or
piere (Dunlin), ooselles, youlwringes (Yellow Hammers), dige
brides or digge birdies (young ducks), § etc. Ducks received
in lieu of rent are entered as boon-ducks. || Dunes were
not Pochards, as the editor supposes, but Knots (Mitchell,
t.c, p. 192). Twelve scriltes, or scrittes, brought home in
June with Lapwings and a Grey Plover, were most likely
* P. 524.
■f " The Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall in the county of Lancaster,
from September 1582 to October 1621," edited for the Cheetham Society by
John Harland (1856-58).
% Probably from its cry, as Borlase tells us, for the same reason
Sajiderlings were called in Cornwall Towille.es (" Natural History of Cornwall,"
p. 247).
§ Cf. " English Dialect Dictionary," art. digg.
|j " Boons," i.e., gifts.
148 EAELY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
Mistle Thrushes as suggested, but it is not very probable
that " thrie whekeres " for which sixteen pence was paid
in December 1591 were Wheatears. Neither scrittes nor
whekeres are included in a list of Lancashire bird names
printed in Hardwicke's " Science Gossip,"* but scaragrice is
given for the Water Rail, literally, the timid bird of the grass.
Prices in Lancashire did not differ sufficiently from those
at Hunstanton to call for remark : Woodcocks varied from
twopence to fourpence.
Hawking items are scattered through the Accounts.
Thus we find that 9s. 6d. was spent in bringing hawks from
London, another time Is. 4d. for hawks' hoods, again 6d.
for hawks' bells, and 4d. for beef for them to eat, while some
necessary repairs to "the haucke mue," i.e., the shed where
they were kept, cost 2s. f
Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth fond of Falconry. —
The sport of falconry, to which our ancestors were enthusias-
tically devoted, has been shown to have been pursued by the
le Straunges, as well as by the Lancashire family of Shuttle-
worth. The popularity which it had attained may be judged
from Shakespeare's plays if by nothing else, for they are fuD
of allusions to it. Perhaps it was the example of the Sovereign
which did a good deal to augment a taste for this form of the
chase, for Queen Elizabeth was fond both of hunting and
hawking, and in Mr. Harting's opinion the latter diversion
had hardly obtained its full development before her reign.
An observation by the German traveller, Paul Hentzner, may
be said to confirm this view, in a passage where he remarks,
when visiting England in 1598, on the circumstance of Falconry
being then the general sport of the English gentry. In that
rare and fine old work, George Turbervile's " The Booke of
Faulconrie or Hauking," printed in 1575, there is a picture of
good Queen Bess mounted on horseback, and gallantly taking
her part in the chase. Two herons have been roused, and
three falcons are circling in the sky overhead, preparatory to
making a stoop, while another has just been cast off at the
* Vol. XVIII., (1882), p. 164.
f Little inferior in importance to the le Straunge and Shuttleworth
accounts is the household book of Naworth Castle in Cumberland, made
public by the Surtees Society, which commences in 1612 and therefore refers
to a later period but is quite as full of items of zoological interest.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 149
quarry by one of the falconers. Elizabeth, active by
nature and a good horsewoman, had inherited a taste tor
hunting and hawking from her father, Henry VIII. Like
him, she was at home in the saddle, and when bent on
pleasure was often to be seen at the head of a brave retinue
in the field.
On some occasions her royal parent appears to have
been over -bold in his adventures. It is related that once
when leaping a dyke with his hawking pole, the staff broke
with his weight, and the King would have been in no small
danger of being smothered in the mud had not one of the
royal falconers been there to drag him out. Another time
the house in which he was lodging caught fire, which, says
the chronicler of events, put the King in great fear, but
fortunately in no jeopardy.* On a third occasion Henry
shot a tame buck by mistake, at least we may presume
it was not done on purpose, for which seven and sixpence
had to be paid by way of compensation.
Modern enthusiasts for the sport of falconry think them-
selves fortunate to possess one at least of Henry VIII. 's
Household books, which has escaped destruction ; although
it only runs from 1529 to 1532, f there are quite a number of
allusions to the King's hawks in it. The best falconers were
Flemings, a reputation long maintained, and Sir N. Nicolas
considers that the king employed ten at least, each of whom
had a livery costing twenty-two shillings and sixpence. J One
Nicholas Clamp received ten pounds a year,§ while others
had a groat (fourpence) a day, and a penny for the food of
each hawk.
Brought up with falconers, and probably himself no
mean judge of the points of a good hawk, Henry VIII. was
partial to one species in particular. This was the Goshawk,
if we may so argue from the circumstance of its being
brought into these curious old accounts by name nine times.
On one occasion the King, when he had sallied forth for an
* " Hall's Chronicle," edn. 1809, pp. 50, 697.
f " The Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry VIII.," edited by Sir
Nicholas H. Nicolas (1827).
} T.c, pp. 142, 198.
S Preface, xxxix.
150 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
expedition, met with a Goshawk upon the cage, or " cadge,"*
a sort of wooden frame on which hawks were commonly carried
hooded. Taking a fancy to the bird, the King purchases it
for three pounds, which is duly paid by one, Master Walche,
who was perhaps the steward. There are many other entries
in the King's accounts about hawks and hawking.
* Cadger, as applied to an itinerant hawker, is said to be derived from
this word, of which also the epithet cad, used in an opprobrious sense, is
considered to be an abbreviation.
Chapter X.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY (3rd Part).
The Sixteenth Century (3rd part): 1544. William Turner. 1555. Conrad
Gesner. The Solan Goose.
William Turner, afterwards Dean of Wells. — -No annals of
ornithology would be complete without proper reference to the
labours of William Turner, who has been called the Father of
British Ornithology, for with the aid of tliis enquiring and in-
dustrious man we may make some tolerable attempt to sketch
the status of British birds in the sixteenth century. Whether
Turner's ornithological tastes continued in later life we are
not told, but he was to the last a botanist. His reputation as
a lover of birds rests on a small but very learned work, the
" Avium Praecipuarum, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem
mentio est, bre\is & succincta historia," which is an attempt
at identifying the birds given by these old -writers. This vol-
ume was printed at Cologne, in Germany, in the year 1544,
and contains most valuable information about British and
German birds, which, but for Turner, would not have come
down to us. The great rarity of the original edition, and of
Dr. Thackeray's later one printed in 1823, have prevented
the work from being generally known. Accordingly a new
edition in 1903, with an excellent translation by Mr. A. H.
Evans, was exceedingly acceptable to all ornithologists.*
Dean Turner furnishes a contribution to the history of
the Solan Goose, which, although well known, will bear quoting
again from Mr. Evans's translation. The Solan Goose, he
tells us, evidently deriving his information from some original
source, "... looks to its young with so much loving care
that it will fight most gallantly with lads that are let down in
baskets by a rope to carry them away, not without danger of
* " Turner on Birds : A short and succinct History of the Principal
Birds noticed by Pliny and Aristotle, first published by Dr. William Turner,
1544." Edited by A. H. Evans, 1903.
152 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
life. Nor must we fail to mention that a salve, most valuable
for many a disease, is made by Scots from the fat of this
Goose, for it is wonderfully full of fat. . . ."
Mr. W. H. Mullens, the author of a very good memoir of
Turner, to be consulted with advantage,* is of opinion that
he owed something to Bartholomseus Anglicus. The " De
Proprietatibus Rerum " of this writer is stated by Mr. Mullens,
in his " Bibliography of British Ornithology," to have been
probably written between 1248 and 1267, f but in any
case it does not detract from the merits of the scholarly
Northumbrian, if he did use it.
The Rev. H. A. Macpherson, who has written with
justifiable enthusiasm about Turner, conjectures that he was
thirty-seven when the "Avium Praecipuarum . . . historia "
was printed ;f but as Mr. Mullens finds that he graduated in
1529-30, he possibly was not so old as that. It may have been,
as both Mullens and Macpherson suggest, the proximity of
the Cambridgeshire fens which directed Turner's attention to
birds, during his ten years' residence at the university, where he
had already brought out a book on botany. § Be that as it may,
the result was the invaluable " Avium Praecipuarum," which
predates the " Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux " of Pierre
Belon and the great work of Conrad Gesner. With Gesner,
Turner was in close friendship, and much mutual assistance
these two men rendered to one another; indeed, Cesner quotes
nearly every observation which Turner has made.
From our point of view, by far the most important part
of the " Avium Praecipuarum " is not that which comments
on Aristotle and Pliny, though Turner meant it to be so, but
his own personal observations on birds. Many of these
maj^ have been made on preaching tours in the east of
England, as for example where he notes that Cormorants
breed in Heronries in Norfolk. It is difficult to say how
* " British Birds," Mag., II., p. 5. Tlie series communicated by Mr.
Mullens, comprises lives of Turner, Carew, Merrett, Martin, Plot, Pennant,
Ray, Willughby, Bewick, Montagu, Macgillivray, Yarrell, Tradeseant,
Charleton, Muffett and Sibbald. It is to be hoped that these valuable articles
will be continued.
f " Bib. B.O.," p. 45.
{ "Zoologist," 1898, p. 337.
§ The " Libellus de re herbaria novus," of which an excellent reprint
was issued by Mr. B. D. Jackson in 1877.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 153
many birds Turner meant to enumerate as British, but
evidently the ninety-five to which he gives English names
are to be so accounted. Not the least singular of the many
facts, with which his pages abound, is the curious reference
to white Herons in England, from which we can only conclude
that Turner had come across an albinistic race of them some-
where, which is all the more remarkable because Herons are
little subject to variation. As regards the status of the birds
of prey ; other than those used in falconry, we know but little.
The Peregrine falcon, and the Gyr falcon prized for their high
qualities do not seem to have been very easy to procure,
while of the smaller hawks, such as the Kestrel, the Hobby
and the Merlin, there is little or nothing which can be
said with certainty, either as to their abundance or their
distribution. Turner, with his usual discrimination, distin-
guished the Hobby, of which he says: "It catches for the
most part Larks and Finches, nests on lofty trees, and is not
seen in winter anywhere." All, or nearly all, Turner's remarks
may be taken as applying to England, unless the contrary is
stated, yet it has to be remembered that he resided for four
years in Switzerland and Germany, before the publication of
his book.
What Turner took to be the Sparrow-hawk of the
English and the Sperwer of the Germans, was the bird which
we now call a Goshawk, which there is every reason for
believing was a not uncommon breeder in the British Isles
{supra, p. 82), while the real Sparrow-hawk (Accipiter nisus)
was possibly less abundant than at the present day. The
bird which Turner had in his mind was large enough to prey
upon Doves, Pigeons, Partridges, and the bigger sorts of
birds, and this description fits the Goshawk. The Marsh
Harrier, he tells us, a bird nearly brown in colour (fusco
proximo), "lives by hunting ducks, and the black fowls which
Englishmen call couts," its fierce attacks on which he had
himself often Eeen. To the Hen Harrier, another plunderer,
Turner can give no praise, it " gets this name among our
countrymen from butchering their fowls," which condemns it.
The Buzzard was probably very generally distributed, both
as breeder and migrant, in the British Isles, and being looked
upon as a rather useful scavenger which did not molest
154 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
chickens, was tolerated, as it still is in some parts of the
continent.
In one of his letters to the Swiss naturalist Gesner,
a translation of which is given by Macpherson in the
"Zoologist,"* Turner, writing of the Kite, says: — "We
have Kites in England, the like of which I have seen
nowhere else. Our birds are much larger than the German
birds, more clamorous, tending more to whiteness, and much
greedier. For such is the audacity of our Kites, that they
dare to snatch bread from children, fish from women, and
handkerchiefs from off hedges, and out of men's hands.
They are accustomed to carry off caps from off men's heads
when they are building their nests. "f This recalls the
description by the Venetian Ambassador before quoted, J
and to go much further back, the testimony of .ZElian. who
speaks of the daring of Kites in the second century, and
accuses them of snatching hair from men's heads, when
engaged in nesting. § In spite of such delinquencies, they
have ever been given special protection, nor was this withheld
from them in England, where there was a fine for killing one.||
At the present day the Red Kite, Milvus ictinus, would be
considered commoner than M. migrans in Western Germany.
The (? Golden) Eagle, the Erne, and the Osprey are
all distinguished by Turner and named as inhabitants of
England, but the Peregrine Falcon appears to have escaped
him. Of Owls he recognised three, of which one was the
Long-eared Owl and one the Eagle Owl.
Turner died in 1568, his age is not known, but he did
not five to be seventy. A monument was put up to his
* 1898, p. 340.
f " Historise Animalium," lib. II., p. 586. Reference supplied by Mr.
Mullens.
\ Supra, p. 82.
§ JFli&n, "De Animalium Natura," lib. II,
|| That the Kite did not eease to be common in the British Isles until
long after this is certain. Francis Willughby and John Ray must have been
familiar with their gliding flight, the former (who died in 1672), describes
them as " very noisome " to chickens, ducklings and goslings, probably
referring to Warwickshire, where most of his short life was spent.
In churchwardens' books we not infrequently find entries of moneys
paid for their destruction ; the church accounts of Tenterden in Kent show
payments for three hundred and eighty in fourteen years, commencing 1677
(N. F. Ticehurst, " Brit. Birds," Mag., XIV., p. 34).
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 155
memory in St. Olave's Church, Crutehed Friars, and on it we
may read, says Macpherson, that the great naturalist was
"ac tandem corpus senio, ac laborious confectum " when he
answered the last roll call. By the kindness of the Rev.
T. Wellard, the lector of St. Olave's, a photograph of
this tablet, which was erected by the affectionate care of
Turner's widow, is here reproduced.
Pierre Belon. — Peter Belon, a French naturalist, was born
about 1519, and was the author of an illustrated work on
ornithology, bearing the title of " Histoire de la Nature des
MMO^yE-VIRO
'' '■ ftiWTiS&l
- I 1 'Kh.IPVBl.ICA
; ■-■" HSSIMOS-HOS
TURNER S TABLET.
Oyseaux " (1555), which contains a good deal that is original
— as, for example, passages referring to the Barn Owls at
Metz (p. 144), the Pelicans at Rama (p. 155), the Mergansers
on the Loire (p. 164), the Gulls at Havre and Dieppe (p. 170),
the white Herons which Turner saw in England (p. 191), and
the Storks on the Hellespont (p. 202). When visiting England
Belon met with the Stone Curlew (p. 239), while he notes the
protection given to Ravens (p. 279), and to Kites (p. 131),
but not much else apparently. However, in his own country
he had more opportunities, and here he does not fail to tell
us about the breeding of the Spoonbill. In his day, the
156 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
u Pale Poche " nested on tall trees in Brittany and Poitou
(p. 194), perhaps near the home of his youth.
Treating of the Sparrow-hawk (Esperuier), of which he
gives a fairly good figure and description (pp. 121-3), Belon
mentions its partiality for Chaffinches which descend into
the plains in winter, and then continues : — [" When] we
were at the mouth of the Euxine Sea, where the Straight of the
Propontis [Marmora] commences, having climbed the highest
hill which is there, we found a fowler taking Sparrow-hawks
[Esperuiers] in a clever way. And as it was near the end of
April, when all birds are nesting, it seemed strange to us to
see so many Kites [Milans] and Sparrow-hawks coming from
the right-hand coast of the great sea. The fowler caught them
with great industry, and did not miss one. He took more
than a dozen every hour. . . . No man could easily imagine
from whence such a multitude of Sparrow-hawks should come.
Eor in the two hours' time that we were spectators of that sport,
we saw more than thirty taken, whence one may conjecture
that one fowler in the space of a day might take more than a
hundred." (Translation.) Under the heading of "Milan noir"
(p. 131) Belon alludes again to the same bird-catcher, expressing
his surprise at the Kites which came to the net in such great
companies. Since Belon's time, other naturalists, particularly
Alleon and Vian, have described the Bosphorus, and remarked
•on the biannual passage of birds of prey which is to be seen
there. " Au printemps," write these authors, " et a l'automne,
le Bosphore presente, pour les naturalistes un spectacle vraiment
merveilleux paries migrations des oiseaux de proie ; leur nombre
depasse tout ce que i'imagination peut supposer."*
John Maplef, 1567. — This was an author who wrote
"A Greene Forest, or a naturall histoire," almost the eatliest
treatise of its kind, but admittedly a compilation; Maplet
describes twenty-eight birds, besides three which are fabulous ;
an account of him is given in the " Bibliography of British
Ornithology." Mr. Harting observes that errors are to be
detected in the descriptions of the Falcon and Goshawk.") -
* " Rev. et Mag. de Zoologie," 18fi9, p. 258. In another place (p. 260)
the same authors speak of " l'agglomeration de ces bandes fabuleuses
d'oiseaux de proie."
| " Bibliotheca. Accipitraria, " p. 10.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 157
Dr. John Kay or Cuius. — To the " Avium Praecipuarum
. . . historia " of Turner, that portion of a kindred work, the
" De Rariorum Animalium atque stirpium Historia," which
relates to ornithology, is a useful sequel. This was published
in 1570 — twenty-six years after Turner's book — by Dr. John
Kay, or Caius as he is commonly called,* a native of Norwich,
although he does not seem to have lived there long. Mr.
Evans gives the whole of the bird part of it with a translation,
as an appendix to his edition of Turner. Kay only describes
thirteen birds in his " De Rariorum," but at some length ;
of these eight are British species, and what he has to say
about them is quite to the point. Noteworthy are his remarks
on the Gannet and the Puffin — one of the latter he actually kept
alive for eight months in his house, which nowadays would
be looked upon by aviculturists as a good performance. It
bit with right good will, but was satisfied with little food,
yet when there was none, begged with the cry of " pup in,
pupin." Our author has a good deal to say about the Solan
Goos3, but his dissertation on that species is entirely from the
writings of others, except where he compares them to Puffins
for flavour and fatness. Of the Meleagris or Guineafowl he
furnishes quite a lengthy description, penned with great
accuracy, which is repeated, but not without acknowledg-
ment, in Gesners " Historia Animalium,'' where there is an
admirable figure of this bird under the name of Gallus
numidicus aut moritanus.^ The species to which Kay,,
for some unknown reason, limited himself, are : —
Sea Eagle (Osprey).
Brent Goose (Barnacle Goose).
Bass Goose (Solan Goose).
Indian Duck (Muscovy Duck).
The Turkish or Second Indian Duck (doubtful).
Sea Pie (Oystercatcher).
The Domestic Getulian Hen (a breed said to come from
Africa).
The Meleagris (Guineafowl).
* Mr. Evans, to whose assistance I am much indebted, points out that
other spellings are Keys and Kees, see Venn's " History of Gonville and
Cams College," p. 30.
f Liber III., p. 772.
158 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
The Morinellus (Dotterel).
Puphin or Pufin (Puffin) and Cormorant.
The Sperniologus or Frugilega (Rook).
The Sacropsittacus (Parrot).
White Ravens (two in Cumberland, August, 1548).
It has been thought that this tract, which can hardly be
all that Kay wrote about birds, was part of a longer treatise
intended as a contribution to Gesner's " Historia Animalium,"
but that, in consequence of Gesner's early death, it was never
communicated.
Conrad Gesner and the Solan Goose. — In passing under
review some of the early classics of ornithology, Ave take note
that the Solan Goose is not described by Eber and Peucer
(1549), nor by Pierre Belon (1555), nor is it given a place by
that great authority on gastronomy, Dr. Muffett, or Moffett
(? 1595). Accordingly we must turn, as in many other
instances, to Conrad Gesner (1555). Gesner was a Swiss
physician, a man of the highest erudition, a great seeker after
knowledge, and the friend of William Turner. There must
have been much in common between Gesner and Turner,
both of whom died in middle age, the former being no more
than forty-eight and the latter only fifty-six. So highly
was Turner's knowledge esteemed by Gesner that, as Mr.
Evans shows, he was continually quoting some of his
observations, e.g., his notes about the Brent and Barnacle
Geese, the Nightjar, the Night Heron, and the Pelican. In
the famous " Historia Animalium " — the ornithological part
of which* came out in 1555, only a year before its author
died — Gesner includes the Solan Goose, but, adhering for
the most part to an inconvenient alphabetical arrangement,
he puts it after the true Geese, and before the Bustard, which
here bears the name " Gustarda," also used by Boece. After
quoting William Turner, Gesner continues: — {Translation.)
" I lately received from a learned Scot those Geese called
Solendgens which are longer than tame ones, but not so
broad : they lay their eggs on rocks : and with one foot
placed upon them (whence perchance the name from solea,
that is, the sole of the foot, and the Germans also so name
them) at length hatch them. Plenty of them are taken at
* Liber ITI., " De Avium Natura."
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
15!)
the Bass island, near the river Forth, which flows hy Edinburgh
in Scotland ; nor are they found anywhere else. They go far,
even six miles, from the shore. It is their nature that when
they see a fresh fish they throw up a former one, and this
SOLAN GOOSE (" HISTOKIA ANIMALIUM
they do very often, and carry the last to their young. More-
over, so many fishes do they throw up that those who form
the garrison of the fortress collect the ejected fishes for food.
They are easily taken, nor do they drive away their captors."
160 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
It is not clear to whom Gesner alludes as Germans, but
it is presumably to some author or authors. Apart from the
letterpress, one cannot, with all desire to praise, say much
for Gesner's artist, for his figure,* which is the earliest attempt
at delineating a Solan Goose, is poor, and not without reason
did Mathurin Brisson ironically designate it as " icon pessima."
On the other hand, some of Gesner's pictures are excellent,
considering the date and the circumstances under which they
were done, as, for example, that of the Cormorant, f which is
one of the best in the book.
Another good one is the Bittern, of which our author
gives a very full history, quoting Turner, but there is not much
that is original in the rest of his narrative, a few paragraphs
of which may be worth translating.
" In Italian it [the Bittern] is called Trumbono, from its
having the voice of a trumpet, as I think : and it is called the
trumpet bird (whether this or another) among the Greeks ;
by others Tarabusso [bull-roarer], or Terrabusa [earth-roarer],
especially by those of Ferrari a, as if it blows through the
earth, for with its beak plunged in the marshy soil it gives
forth a terrible noise. I think it is the same as, with diminished
voice, they call aigeron, that is ardeola, for they say that it is
rufous. . . . its voice when strained being as great as that
of a bull, which may be heard at the distance of half a German
mile, that is half an hour's journey : and it is said to be a
sign of rain. The inhabitants of our lake Tigur [in Zurich]
rejoice when this noise is heard, and promise themselves a
fruitful year. . . . The Ardea stellaris which I myself have
seen was smaller and shorter than the other, whose description
we shall subjoin together with its shape : with the same
colours all over its body, variegated and choice, after the
fashion of the country partridge, or woodcock, russet or
somewhat yellow, sprinkled with black spots and all shiny,
especially on its back, with legs of a greenish-yellow, with
black head, and neck the length of three spans and three
fingers : the remainder of its body only three spans long.
Its big claw was toothed on one side, the middle toe exceeded
the human middle toe by a nail and a half's breadth. Its
* T.c, p. 158.
t P. 132.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 161
bod}^ almost as thin as that of a young cock : and its wings
also almost like those of fowls. It flies away with difficulty
unless it has previously sprung up [lit. jumped]. It lays
eggs to the number of eleven or twelve, or fewer. I saw its
nest interwoven with reeds in a certain lake, with twelve
eggs.* In colour indeed it is so near that of the reeds, that it
can scarcely be observed when lying among them."
William Harrison. 1577. — William Harrison was a canon
of Windsor, who, among other things, wrote an account of
the birds of England, which is prefixed to " Holinshed's
Chronicles," and which, though short, is from its early
date, very important. He has a good deal to tell us about
birds generally, particularly about the birds of pre}', under
the head of " Hawkes and Rauenous Eoules." After
first describing the Golden Eagle's nest at Castle Dinas
Bran in Denbighshire, originally recorded by John Leland,
the antiquary, he continues : — " I have seen the carren crowes
so cunning also by their own industry of late, that they used
to soar over great rivers (as the Thames, for example), and
suddenly coming down have caught a small fish in their feet
and gone away withall without wetting of their wings. And
even at this present the aforesaid river is not without some of
them, a thing in my opinion not a little to be wondered at.
We have also ospraies, which breed with us in parks and woods,
whereby the keepers of the same do reap in breeding time no
small commodity" : for so soon almost as the young are hatched,
they tie them to the butt ends or ground ends of sundry trees,
where the old ones finding them, do never cease to bring
fish unto them, which the keepers take and eat from them,
and commonly is such as is well fed, or Dot of the worst sort."f
It would seem that in the Middle Ages the Osprey was
very much commoner in the British Isles than it is at the
present day. That it was plentiful in England in the six-
teenth century is certainly implied by William Turner, to
-whom it was probably no unfamiliar sight, although he does
not actually say that he had met with it, contenting himself
with the comment that the Osprey was " a bird much better
known to-day to Englishmen than many who keep fish in
* A nest containing twelve eggs cannot have belonged to a Bittern,
f Edition 1807, Vol. I., p. 582.
M
162 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
stews would wish ; for within a short time it bears off every
fish."*
In the seventeenth century it was becoming rarer, the
introduction of firearms having begun to lessen its num-
bers. The poet Drayton, whose description of Lincolnshire
was published in 1622, speaks of " the Osprey, oft here seen,
though seldom here it breeds, "f which does not imply great
abundance.
It has been supposed that the Osprey was sometimes tried
by falconers, but probably with no success. An Act in the
reign of William and Mary prohibiting the taking of salmon
by Hauks, Racks, Gins, etc., J has given colour to this idea,
but the " Hauk " here alluded to was a kind of fish-trap,
and not the bird.§ Mr. Harting, however, has shown that
Ospreys Avere certainly kept by James I. with Cormorants
and tame Otters on the Thames at Westminster. ||
Various other birds are enumerated by William Harrison,
among which are the dotterel or wind, so named from the
windy or foolish character which it bore, the pauper [Spoonbill],
crane, bitter, bustard, snite, pewet [Black-headed Gull], notte
[Knot], oliet or olife [Oystercatcher], dunbird, kite, woodspike
and woodnawe [Woodpeckers], ruddock [Robin], washtaile
[Wagtail], cheriecracker [?], tiuit ? [Tit], and several more.
Aldrovanchis. — There is not a great amount which is
original in Aldrovandus's sixteen portly volumes — the
" Historia Naturalium " (1599-1603) — a work of compilation
stated by Newton to have been mostly printed after the
author's death in 1605, ^| and altogether very inferior to that
of Gesner, from whom the whole of Aldrovandus's account
of the Solan Goose (Tom. ter., liber XIX., ch. xx.) has been
appropriated. Aldrovandus gives as many as seven illustra-
tions of the Ruff and Reeve, and of these, one has been
discovered by Mr. W. H. Mullens to have been copied from
* Evan's translation, p. 37.
t "Poly-Olbion," S. XXV.
J This Act is given in Kelson's " Laws Concerning Game," 1751, p. 88.
§ The " New English Dictionary" (Vol. V., p. 131) cites as the earliest
use of the word " hawk "in this sense a passage in JohnWorlklge's " System
of Agriculture " (1009), where it is described as a fish trap.
|| " Essays on Sport and Natural History," p. 429.
*[ Three volumes completed by 1003 ("Diet, of Birds," p. 6).
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 163
an anonymous pamphlet, printed in England soon after
1586.* The cut, Avhich is quite meritorious, represents in
very characteristic fashion, one of a flock of Ruffs, which
were " intangled and caught " at Crowley in Lincolnshire.
Mr. Mullens is of opinion that in this pamphlet, which was
evidently written as a protest against the extravagant fashions
of the day, we have the earliest mention of the Ruff as a
British bird, together with the first published figure and des-
cription of it. The pious John Ray and his pupil Willughby
went to see Aldrovandus's collection on their Italian travels
and it may be assumed jotted down many memoranda for
future use.f This was on February 22nd, 1664, when the
former writes of it in his journal : " Among many natural and
artificial rarities therein preserved, we took more especial notice
of ten volumes of the pictures of plants, and six of birds, beasts
and fishes, drawn exactly in colours by the hand."$ All these
volumes may have been laid under contribution for Ray's
subsequent works on plants, birds and fishes, for which they
would have furnished useful material. Sir Thomas Browne's
son was another naturalist, who wrote to his father that he
went to see Aldrovandus's collection in 1665.§ Whether
these books are still in existence, I have had no means of
ascertaining.
It may not be amiss to give the following table of dates,
which help to the better understanding of these authors and
their writings, while it will be seen from it that Turner was the
first of the five to publish.
1510
Caius born.
1564
Gesner died.
1512
Turner ,,
1568
Turner ,,
1516
Gesner ,,
1570
Caius published.
1544
Turner published.
1573
,, died.
1555
Gesner ,,
1595
MufEett wrote.
1555
Belon ,,
1599
Aldrovandus published
* See " British Birds," Mag. XIII., p. 13.
f Aldrovandus probably had a fine collection, which passed to Cospi
of Bologna (" Ann. Rept. Museums Association," 1891, p. 34). Gesner also
had a museum, which must have contained treasures among its birds, and
another collection of mark was that belonging to Kentmann of Dresden
(i.e., p. 29).
% " Travels through the Low Countries," by John Ray, F.R.S., p. 200.
§ Browne's " Works," (Wilkin's edn.. Vol. I., p. 89).
Chapter XI.
THE CRANE, BUSTARD, SPOONBILL AND BITTERN.
The Status of the Crane* in the British Isles. — We have
now carried these Annals through sixteen centuries, not without
some profit, I hope, and before proceeding any further it is
proposed to make a digression, ■ there being two or three
species which it may not be amiss to treat separately, even
though it may involve a little repetition, and conspicuously
among them stands the Crane, so intimately associated with
the pleasures of sport in the Middle Ages. We have already
quoted such allusions to the Crane in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries as came to hand, and to some extent the
same ground has been gone over by Mr. J. E. Harting,f so
on that head no more need be said. Nor need we again
refer to the finding of its bones : the fact of their having
been dug up in a semi-fossihsed state in sundry parts of
the kingdom, which were doubtless once fenland, proves
that the Crane must have been a tolerably common bird. As
regards the fifteen+h century, the Crane was still pretty
plentiful, but probably more so as a winter visitor than as a
breeder. It will be remembered that it was in the month of
September that two hundred and four Cranes Avere commanded
in 1465 for the great Neville banquet (supra, p. 87). Cranes
were a festival dish in high favour, J and from their large size
even more so than Herons, so long as they were procurable,
but it is hardly likely that 204 were actually brought to table.
Such an order, with many other birds besides, would have
* Grus communis , Bech.
| The " Field," Dec. 23rd, 1882. There is an entry of fourpence in
the Countess of Leicester's Roll (antea, p. 50), 1265, paid to a boy for
seeking a Crane, griiem in puteo, but Mr. A. H. Evans tells me that this does
not mean in a well, as has been supposed, but in a spring, or marsh.
In the ancient Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham, printed for the
Surtees Society (1898), entries of Cranes occur in 1312, 1358, 1375 and 1390.
I One of the earliest articles in " Archaeologia " is " A Dissertation
on the Crane as a Dish " (" Arch.," 1773, p. 171).
STATUS OF THE CRANE 165
been very difficult of execution, and more than the fowlers
of England could supply. For the sixteenth century it is to
William Turner's writings that Ave chiefly look for information
concerning the Crane, and the same may be said of many other
species, regarding which this talented man has left invaluable
notes behind him. Turner has been often quoted on the
subject of the Crane, and perhaps too much stress has been
laid on his remarks. What he says is : " Cranes, moreover,
breed in England in marshy places. I myself have very often
seen their pipers [young ones], though some people born
away from England urge that this is false." * He appears
to have written to Gesner to the same effect, f and the
passage is copied by Aldrovandus $
Turner's expression " very often seen " in the " Avium
Praecipuarum . . . historia" is explicit, and admits of no
denial. Young Cranes, which soon learn to use their legs,
may have been caught by countrymen and brought into
Cambridge. That they were sometimes kept as pets is
indicated, as Mr. Harting points out in his valuable essay,
by an inventory of the chattels of Thomas Kebeel § in
1500, where three live Cranes are valued at five shillings, ||
perchance some which had been taken when young in the
fens. In the same way Turner, in some of his botanical
rambles, when he was a student, may have come across them.
Although no one doubts Turner's word, there is only one
witness who is able to support it, for Dr. Kay, who could
have given some confirmation, says nothing. This witness is
Dr. Thomas Muffett, or Moffet, a learned physician who wrote
about 1595. In his " Health's Improvement "^f Muffett states
that " Cranes breed, as old Dr. Turner wrote to Gesner, not
only in the northern countries, but also in our English fens."
It remains doubtful whether Muffett had any independent
knowledge on the subject, or whether he was merely quoting
Turner, whose work he had doubtless seen.
* Evans's edn., p. 97.
j See " Historia Animalium."
{ Liber III., p. 511.
§ or Kebel.
(I " Gentleman's Magazine," 1768, p. 259.
«[ For the loan of which I am indebted to Mr. H. S. Gladstone: for a
life of Muffett see " British Birds," Mag., V., p. 262.
166 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
When Cranes were thus breeding in the fens of Cambridge-
shire, there can be little doubt that some also mated in the
marshes surrounding what are now known as the Broads
of Norfolk, as well as in the tract near Lynn which was called
Marshland, and in the fens of South Lincolnshire. Proof
of the first supposition regarding the Broads has been
discovered by Mr. J. C. Tingey in the Chamberlain's accounts
of Norwich, where he has found an entry of a payment in
June, 1542, to one Notyngham of Hickling of five shillings
for a young Crane, and fourpence for the carriage of it to
Norwich.* As to what parts of England were inhabited by
Cranes besides Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire, we
have unfortunately little information, but from the habits of
the bird it must have been strictly dependent on fen country.
As regards Wales, there is the evidence of George Owen of
Henlys f that the Crane was a breeder in Pembrokeshire
in the sixteenth century, and that it was also common there
long before that time is made tolerably certain by old laws in
the possession of the Welsh school, t
As early as the time of King John the Crane was a
favourite quarry for the Falcons of royalty, and there seems
to have been no difficulty in coming across them. When the
King had no inclination to go sporting, safe-conducts were
granted at Westminster to fowlers to proceed to divers parts
of the kingdom for the purpose of catching Cranes and other
birds, § and in this way the palace was supplied with what
was then considered to be game of prime quality. Very
likely Herons were sometimes made to do duty for Cranes,
yet it cannot be doubted that Cranes were still tolerably
* See T. Southwell " On the Breeding of the Crane in East Anglia "
("Norwich Naturalists' Trans.," VII., p. 168).
f See Owen's " Description of Pembrokeshire" in the " Cymmrodorion
Record Series" (1892, No. 1, p. 131), edited by Mr. Henry Owen of Poyston,
from which considerable extracts were given in the" Zoologist " (1895, p. 245).
There is at least one modern occurrence of the Crane in Wales, and that
was also in Pembrokeshire, April 28th. 1893, but the notification of two
in Car liganshire in May, 1696 (" The Philosophical Transactions," V., p. 331,
must be dismissed as doubtful.
I The Master of the Hawks was to be honoured with three presents the
dav his Hawk kills one of these three birds : a Bittern, a Crane, or a Heron.
" The Ancient Laws of Cambria," translated by William Probert, 1823
(p. 100).
§ " Calendar of Patent Rolls, 33, Edward I." (pt. I., p. 321).
STATUS OF THE CRANE 167
abundant in districts suited to their habits, and these districts
would be known to the falconers.
Protection for Crane's Eggs. — But a change was soon to
come, and of this we get a decided hint in the Act of 1534,
passed under Henry VIII., who was a keen falconer, and had
an eye for any birds which afforded good sport.
Act of 1534.
25 Henry VIII., Cap. XI.
An Act to avoid destruction of Wild-fowl.
Section 4 prohibits the taking of the eggs of any kind of
Wild -fowl from the 1st of March [1533], and the last day of
June, and so on yearly, under pain of imprisonment, besides
having to forfeit for every egg of any Crane or Bustard twenty
pence, of a Bittour (Bittern), Heronne, or Shouelard (Spoonbill)
eightpence, and for every egg of Mallard, Teal or any other
wild-fowl, except Crows, Ravens, Bosardes (Buzzards) and
other fowl not used to be eaten, a penny.*
Unfortunately this Act protected the eggs only, and not
the birds which laid them, an oversight which, as Professor
Newton is at pains to point out, - ) - was fatal, yet that its
intention was good cannot be doubted.
Gradually, as guns and gunpowder came into use, the
days of the Crane were numbered. It was natural for men
to wish to try the new weapon on the largest bird in the land,
especially as -in this case it would fetch a good price for eating ;
accordingly what the crossbow and its metal bolts failed to
do, the gun soon accomplished. The Crane from its great size
was readily discovered : it had no means of concealment, it was
commoner than the Bustard, and less difficult of approach.
Moreover, the fact that, like the Bustard, it was a ground breeder
would go against it, and in the end be certainly fatal to
its continuance. Its eggs were only two in number, and the
nest rather easy to discover, J while the young ones, although
* A part of this Act, which was found to be too oppressive, was, it is
stated, repealed in 1550, but not that portion which prohibited the taking
of eggs.
t " Dictionary of Birds," p. 226.
% In Spain the old Cranes form tracks to their nests like a cattle path
(" Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar," p. 179).
16S EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
they quickly learnt to use their legs, could be sometimes caught.
Such as did not fall victims in one way or another, before long
found themselves too much harried to remain in England,
and accordingly when the migratory season came round,
experience taught the survivors not to return. Quickly, then,
the Crane's loud trumpet, which was to the peasants of that
wide marshland tract, which included the " Great Bedford
Level," one of the heralds of spring, ceased to be heard. But
the remembrance of the stately Crane, as the poet Drayton
aptly terms it, could not fade away from their minds. Its
memory remained, and it is significant of this that there
were, long afterwards, taverns to be seen which exposed a
signboard bearing as an emblem — The Three Cranes.* The
actual date at which the Crane left off breeding in the British
Isles can never be fixed, but that it had entirely ceased to do
so before 1700 there is every reason to believe ; yet it is true
there are some Lincolnshire Fen laws, which Pishey Thompson
cites in his " Boston and The Hundred of Skirbeck " (p. 368),
which protected the eggs of Swans and Cranes as recently
as 1780.
The Crane as a Winter and Spring Visitant. — Putting
the question of breeding aside for the present, we come
next to the second phase of the Crane's history, viz.,
its status in Britain as a winter and spring visitant, but
apparently less common in autumn : this phase of its career
may be judged to have exceeded a century, roughly from
1650 to 1750. After that the Crane seems to have bequeathed
its name to the Heron, which was the bird that it most
resembled,"|" and to have become, what it is at the present
* Larwood and Hotten particularly allude to a house of that name in
Thames Street, London, which was known and frequented in the sixteenth
century (" History of Signboards," p. 204). See also Haiben s " Dictionary
of London " (pp. 495, 577) ; at the present time there are, according to
Harben, four Crane courts in the Metropolis, including the court in Fleet
Street, which was burnt in the great conflagration of 1666.
f Mr. Swann is of opinion that " The numerous place-names derived
from Cranerefer obviously in most cases to theHeron " ("Dictionary of English
and Folk-names," p. 62). Thus Cranshaws Castle in Berwickshire may have
earned its name from the young Herons which were to be had there, then
perhaps known to the country people as Craneseugbs or Craneshaws, but
" shaw " also sometimes means a wood. In Norfolk we have Cranwick
parish and Cranworth, the prefix in both cases being Anglo-Saxon (see
Munford's " Derivation of the Names of Towns and Villages," p. 90), so in
this case, the names are more likely to have reference to Cranes than to Herons.
STATUS OF THE CRANE 169
day, merely a rare and occasional migrant driven to the
British Isles by accidental circumstances. This is the onl}'
character which Thomas Pennant is able to give it in his
" British Zoology," in 1768.* Here the Crane is included in
the appendix, with the comment that the inhabitants of
Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire appeared to be scarcely
acquainted with it. " We therefore conclude," adds Pennant,
" that these birds have forsaken our island."
Albin, perhaps less well informed than Pennant, considered
it more common, "j" but in 1787 John Latham, while referring
to its ancient abundance, had only three modern occurrences
to give his readers, all evidently migrants.^
Going back to the sixteenth century there are a good
many scattered records to be dealt with, forming enough
materials to build up quite a tolerable history of this bird. The
first mention to hand is in 1502, when twelve pence was paid
on October 0th, as appears from the " Privy Purs© Expenses
of Elizabeth of York" (p. 51), to a servant for bringing the
Queen a Crane. Presumably it was for eating ; other items
are for " an hert," " woodcokkes," " a present of byrdes,"
and some " quayles," all of which were for the table.
The next allusion to be cited is one in 1512, contained in the
Regulations of the Household of the Earl of Northumber-
land, where, as was to be expected, the Crane is set down as
being a proper and obtainable viand, but by implication a
winter one : —
" Cranys must be hadde at Cristymas ande outlier
Principall Feists. ..."
Attention has already been drawn to the references
to Cranes in the Norfolk Accounts of le Straunge, where we
have no less than twenty-eight entries, all of them with one
exception in the autumn and winter (supra, p. 130). The
Crane is named three times in the Middieton (Notts.)
Accounts. Here two of the entries are particularly note-
worthy, because they have reference to captures in the spring,
the first time being in April, 1522, and the second in June, 1523,
* 8vo ed., Vol. II., p. 629.
f " Natural History of Birds," II., p. CO.
J " General Synopsis of Birds," Suppl., p. 298.
170 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
a date when Cranes would be nesting.* On the first occasion
as many as eight Cranes are brought in (p. 340), which sounds
as if the fowlers had caught a party on migration : on the
second the number is not stated, but may have been consider-
able, as it was " a gaynste Maystrys Alyse weddyug " in the
beginning of June (p. 357).
In 1525 the Duke of Norfolk built himself a palace at
Kenninghall in Norfolk, and from the " Exponeys of
howshould " Mr. R. Houlett has drawn up a tolerable list of
fish, birds and minor provisions which were consumed there. f
The Crane, however, is only twice mentioned, and in neither
case is the month given.
In 1526, at a banquet given by Sir John Nevile in
Yorkshire, nine Cranes were provided at a cost of thirty
shillings, and at another banquet in 1530 twelve more were
had at three shillings and fourpence eacb,$ but the month of
the year is not recorded. There is no reason for supposing
that these were not real Cranes ; Heron-sewes and " bytters "
are mentioned as well.
When the French Ambassadors came to England in
1528, the citizens of London presented them inter alia with
twelve Cranes, twelve Pheasants and thirty-six Partridges. §
The time of the year was, it appears, October, and that the
birds Avere real Cranes, and not Herons, which would have
been a gift of less consequence, is most probable. In 1531
the first entry of a Crane, which Mr. Tingey has traced
occurs in the Norwich City Accounts, and is followed by other
records of these large birds being brought for festival
occasions. || In 1530 and 1532 Eltham Palace in Kent was
supplied with two Cranes in October, and four Cranes and
two Bustards in January. *} Between 1537 and 1554 the
Registers of Lincoln record the presentation to the Dr.ke of
* " Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton " (Historical Man.
Conm., 1911, pp. 340, 357). What adds considerably to these accounts
is the statement in the introduction that they were partly arranged in
bundles, some of which T have had the privilege of seeing, by Francis
Willughbv and John Ray.
j " Norfolk Archfeology," XV., pp. 57, 58.
I " The Forme of C'ury," by Samuel Pegge [the elder], 1780, pp. 105, 183.
§ " Hall's Chronicle," edition 1809, p. 733.
|| "Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Eighth," pp. 85, 187, 188.
«[ CI. "Norwich Naturalists' Trans," Vol. Vlf., p. 103.
STATUS OF THE CRANE 171
Norfolk and others of twelve Cranes,* to be eaten on special
occasions, but no exact dates are given.
In 1555 Sir William Dugdale tells us seven Cranes were
received as contributions from different peoplef at the dinners
which took place in October at the elaborate festivities of the
Serjeants of the Inner Temple, in London. Thirty-six Herons
and Bitterns were also brought to table.
In 1567 no less than nine Cranes, all killed in November,
with five Herons and sixteen Bitterns, were sent from Norfolk
for a wedding-feast, if The bride was Elizabeth More of
Loseley, near Guildford, and the ceremony and subsequent
feasting took place in the Blackfriars, London. Also at the same
time there were forwarded by the donor, who was a Mr. Balam,
twenty-two Godwits — probably Black-tailed Godwits — fifty-
two Knots and ninety Stints ; all these birds came out of
Marshland, the flat tract between Wisbech and Lynn, and are
as likely to have been killed in Cambridgeshire as in Norfolk.
On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kirtlinge in
Cambridgeshire, on the 1st of September, 1577, only one Crane
was provided for her entertainment, as against seventy
Bitterns, twenty-eight young Herons, and twelve Spoonbills.
The time of year — September — was not favourable for procuring
Cranes, we may assume, or there would have been more. This
may end the list of Cranes so far as England is concerned,
although it is likely enough that research could add a few
more records. But the eleven passages which have been
called in evidence imply that the Crane was no rare bird.
Cranes in Scotland and Ireland. — In Scotland there are
but few sixteenth and seventeenth century records of the
Crane. In 1503 some live Cranes were brought to James IV.,
when in Dumfriesshire, but possibly, as Mr. H. Gladstone
suggests, they were only Herons, which were often called
Cranes. § In the Household Accounts of James V.,
" Excerpta E Libris Domicilii Domini Jacob) Quinti,
MDXXV. — MDXXXIII.,|| we find about six and twenty
* " Hist. MSS. Com." XIV. Report, app. : VIII., pp. 35, 41, 46, 48.
f " Origines Judiciales," pp. 132-135.
i " Archaeologia," XXXVI., p. 36.
§ " Birds of Dumfriesshire," p. 359.
II Contained in " The Proceedings of the Baunatyne Club," Vol. LIV.
172 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
references to the Crane, the correctness of all of which may
be accepted, as the Heron is always separately named. The
months in which the entries come may be specified : two are
in January, two in February, as many as seven in April and
four in May, while for the autumn there are four in October,
five in November and two in December. Although four
Cranes were taken in May and one as late as May 30th, it
cannot be said that there is anything here which proves
breeding. Hector Boece (1526) does not name the Crane,
which is perhaps surprising, but in 1529 the great bird appears
among the good things at the Earl of Atholl's feast. In
the Rental of Cupar Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in Angus,
printed for the Grampian Club — an antiquarian society
which no longer survives — there are (as I am informed by
Mr. R. K. Hannay) agreements, dated 1541 and 1547, with
a fowler, that he shall have five shillings for each Crane and
Swan,* a price which in 1550 and 1554 was raised to six
shillings and eightpence.f
The former figure agrees very well with a Scotch Act
of 1551, fixing the prices of wild-fowl, in which the Crane
is rated at five shillings. J
The above are not quite all the allusions to the Crane
in Scotland, for in 1578 John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, who wrote
a history of Scotland, speaks of " Grues plurimi, sicut et
* Vol. II., pp. 13, 56.
t Vol. II., pp. 241, 251.
% In this Act the Heron 13 not mentioned, but five shillings seem? too
high for a Common Heron. As the Act is little known, a copy of it, from
" The Laws and Acts of Parliament of Scotland," 1682 (Part 1, p. 276), with
which Jlr. Quinton has obliged me, may be here inserted. It is entitled,
" Of the prices of wild and tame meates."
" Item it is statute and ordained . . . That is to say, in The first, the
Cran five shillings : The Swan five shillings : The Wild Gnse of the great
kind twa shillinges : The claik [Barnacle GooseJ, quink [Golden-eye Duck]
&. rute [Brent Goose], the price of the peeee, auchteene pennies. Item the
Hover & small mure fovvle, price of the peece, foure pennies : The Black
Cock and gray-Hen, price of the peece sex pennies : the dousane of Powtes
[young Moorfowl] tw-elve pennies. Item the Quhaip [Curlew] sex pennies.
Item the Cunning [Babbit] ij shillings unto the feast of Fastens-evin nixt
to cum, and fra Thine fourth XTI pennies. Item the Lapron [young Rabbit]
twa pennies. Item, the Woodde Cocke, foure pennies. Item, the dousane
of Lavorockes [Sky Larks] and uthers small birdes, the price of the dousane,
foure pennies. Item, the Snipe and quailzie [Quail], price of the peece
twa pennies. Item, the tame-guse xvj pennies. Item, the capone, twelve
pennies. Item, the Hen and pultrie, aucht pennies. Item, the chicken,
foure pennies. Item, the gryse, auchteene pennies."
STATUS OF THE GREAT BUSTARD 173
ardeoe " as if he supposed them to be equally common.
There is nothing to show that Cranes have ever bred in
Scotland, but this may be because written records of North
Britain are so few.
In Ireland the Crane is supposed to haA T e been formerly
common, but Mr. Ussher is unable to cite any documents
to prove it, between the time of Giraldus (supra, p. 46), whose
testimony is not very conclusive, and 1739.* The country
is suitable for Cranes, which still visit Ireland from time to
time as migrants, and no more than that can be said.f
The Status of the Great Bustard % in the British Isles. —
The early status of the Great Bustard as an inhabitant
of England is somewhat clouded and, much as we should
like to fathom the obscurity of the past, it cannot be
done. In one respect its history differs from that of the
Crane, for the Crane was known from the earliest times,
and is often cited by name in historical documents ; but not
so the Bustard, which had no Saxon appellation and does net
come into early British history. Some there are who have
thought, with the late Mr. Howard Saunders, that it inhabited
all the undulating plains and wolds from the British Channel
to the Firth of Forth, § but is there really enough evidence
to warrant such a conclusion ? To begin with, we find an
echo of its former existence in Yorkshire in the family name
* Of. "Birds of Ireland," p. 246.
f Although it does not pertain to the sixteenth century, one is tempted
to recall a remark of Sir Thomas Browne, made by him about 1662, viz.,
that Cranes were often to be seen in Norfolk in hard winters. What
Willughby and Ray have to tell on the matter fourteen years later is also
rather important. In the first or Latin edition of their " Ornithologia " (1676),
p. 201), these authors say : —
Saspissime ad nos commeant, sunt que in palustribus agri Lincolniensis
& Cantabrigiensis testivo tempore magni eorum greges."
But in the English edition, issued two years after the " Ornithologia,"
Ray omits the important words " sestivo tempore," and says : " whether or
no they breed in England I cannot certainly determine either of my own
knowledge or from the relation of any credible person."
In the " Synopsis Methodica Avium," which was published in 1713,
five years after Ray's death, the words " hyberno tempore " are substituted
for " sestivo tempore."
% Otis tarda, Lin.
§ See Yarrell's " British Birds," Vol. III., p. 195.
174 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
of Bustard, and that so long ago as 1391.* Perhaps this
does not go for a great deal, but it is not improbable
that the name came from the bird, but, even if it did, this
neither proves nor disproves its abundance. Again, we have
Sir William Dugdale giving Busterdesdole (i.e., Bustard's
boundary) and Bustard's lode (i.e., watercourse), in his
" History of Imbanking," as ancient names near King's Lynn
in Norfolk.f
The Bustard is one of the thirty birds enumerated in
1413 in the " Boke of Keruynge," and it is named among the
cooking recipes in John Russell's rhyming " Boke of Nurture "
{circa 1450) :—
" Pecok, Stork, Bustarde and Shovellewre,
Ye must unlace them in the plite [manner] of the crane
prest and pure ..."
These allusions, which may be taken as applying to the
British bird, show that it was appreciated for eating in spite of
its somewhat rank smell, which gave it a bad name with some.
We have already enumerated the partially unpublished records
of Bustards in the le Straunge Accounts, one of them being
as early as 1520, and on that head no more need be said,
although they are of great value, going back, as they do,
nearly four hundred j'ears.J Tantalising in his brevity,
Dr. Kay does not allude to the Bustard at all, and William
Harrison merely sets down its name without remark, while
we may conclude that Turner had not personally met with
it in England, although possibly he had seen it in Germany.
Turner calls it a Bustard or Bistard,§ the latter spelling, which
is obsolete, being the same used by Christopher Merrett.||
It can hardly be said that before 1555 the Great Bustard
had its place as a British species recognised. About that
time appeared Conrad Gesner's well-prepared folios, from
which the study of ornithology received a great impulse,
* See " Testamenta Eboracensis," Part L, p. 153. Also in Fines Roll,
16 Edward II. (1323).
t Pp. 244, 286.
X As pointed out by Dr. Tieehurst (p. 130), there is a record tor Kent
of a Bustard in 1480.
§ Evans's edn., p. 167
jj A century later. See " Pinax," p. 173.
STATUS OF THE GREAT BUSTARD 175
and in the third book of the " Historia Animalium " — qui
est cle Allium natura — the Bustard is described twice over.
First in the character of a Scotch bird (p. 159), but Gesner's
discrimination was too acute not to realise that the bird
known to Hector Boece as "a Gustard " was the same as
the " Trapp " of the Germans. Of this he gives a very good
figure (of a female, p. 468), accompanied by a rather lengthy
description, in the course of which, referring to England,
Gesner observes : — " Trappos permultos in Anglia esse audio,
& locis gaudere aquosis [errore]. Sylvaticus tardam avem
in aqua degere scribit. In segetibus [corn-fields] ssepe
inveniuntur " (p. 470).
The statement here quoted, that there were very many
Bustards — " Trappos permultos " — in England, is somewhat
remarkable. Mr. W. H. Mullens has pointed out that the
same is repeated by Alclrovanclus in his Liber XII., but it must
be remembered that the " Historia Naturalium " is little
more than a compilation. Mr. Mullens thinks it hardly
likely that this information was communicated by William
Turner, although Turner is the only Englishman known
to have been in regular correspondence with Gesner.
Alclrovandus's words translated are : "I hear that there
is an abundance of Bustards [copiam Otidum] in England
from those who have travelled through that island."
This is not exactly what Gesner says, yet it is probably
borrowed from him. Gesner goes on to say, on the authority
of one Sylvaticus, that Bustards were taken with dogs and
falcons, and that their feathers were in request with fishermen
for dressing flies. In Sylvaticus, Mr. Mullens recognises
Matthseus Silvaticus of Salerno in Italy,* so we may presume
that this latter passage is not to apply to British Bustards.
Dr. Thomas Muffett, whose " Health's Improvement "
is supposed to have been written in 1595, gives, under the
heading of Tarda?, quite a long space to the merits of the
" Bistards or Bustards. "f
" In the summer towards the ripening of the corn," he
says, possibly referring to Salisbury Plain at the time when
he lived at Wilton in Wiltshire. " I have seen half a dozen
* The author of a medical work in 1474.
f Edition 1655, p. 91.
176 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
of them lie in a wheat field, fatting themselves (as a Deer will
doe) with ease and eating ; whereupon they grow sometimes
to such bigness, that one of them weigheth almost fourteen
pounds.* Now as they are of an extraordinary bulk, so
likewise are they of rare nourishment. ..."
In spite of Gesner's unknown correspondent, we must
judge the Great Bustard never to have been a very common
species in the British Isles. It required wide extents of
open country, not timbered, and there cannot have been a
great many such districts available apart from the plains
in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Wiltshire. On Salisbury
Plain, and also on the wolds of Lincolnshire, and the still
more extensive high grounds of Yorkshire, and on the clowns
of Sussex, small droves of Bustards, in companies of ten or
a dozen, lived and flourished for a long time. But although
they maintained their existence it was far from being in
unmolested retirement, even at the period of which we are
writing.f
There is no indication of the Bustard having ever
been a native of either Wales or Ireland, while in Scotland
only one locality was known, and that in the extreme south,
the Mers (or border district) of Lothian, and here Boece says
they were few in number. Boece spells the name with a G
— Gustard, and Muffett Gusetard — but that was merely the
Scotch way of pronouncing it. The only other Scotch authority
for the Great Bustard is the " Prodromus Historic Naturalis "
(1684) of Sir Robert Sibbald, where we read :
" Otis, the slow bird of Aldrovandus. This seems to be
that which is called Gustard by our Avriters. In size it is
fully equal to a turkey. It is said to frequent Merse, and
I was recently informed that one had been seen in East
Lothian not long since." (Translation.) X
* Old males weigh much more than this.
t The last of the native rape — or very nearly the last — was shot at
Lexham in Norfolk, in May, ]S38, and was, I believe, seen in the flesh by my
father, who, in a note made at the time, remarks that the plumage was much
worn on the back as if the bird had missed its moult (" Zoologist," S.S.,
p. 4724). As it was not likely to have found a mate there could'have been
small chance of its breeding, even if it had been spared. In 1876 I saw a
migrant in February at Hockwold in the same county.
I As given by Mr. Mullens in " British Birds," Mag., VI., p. 41, and
compared with a MS. translation in the possession of Mr. H. S. Gladstone.
STATUS OF THE SPOONBILL 177
The. Status of the Spoonbill* — The former status of the
Spoonbill in England presents a problem which, however con-
sidered, must cause some regret for the loss of such a fine
resident. There is besides the reflection that if the Spoonbill
be lost, other good species, as for instance the Night-Heron,
may have gone, of which we have now no knowledge. It
is now well known that Spoonbills, or Shovellers (shouelard)
as they were called, must have bred in heronries, or by them-
selves, in some of the more southern English counties, a fact
to which Mr. J. E. Harting was the first to draw public atten-
tion. In addition to breeding in Sussex and Middlesex, as
shown by Mr. Harting, and probably also in Kent, Spoonbills
nested in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and doubt-
less much later, in at least three spots in Norfolk (supra, p. 58),
to which may be added Feltwell, where a fen on the Little
Ouse was known as Poppylot.f Also we know that in the
sixteenth century they bred somewhere near Hunstanton,
as shown in the ninth chapter (supra, p. 131), as well as at
Claxton and Reedham on the Yare. In the seventeenth
century we have it on the authority of Sir Thomas Browne
that there were Spoonbills at the mouth of the Orwell at
Trimley in Suffolk. The position of all these places can be
best explained by marking them on a map of Norfolk and
Suffolk (p. 178).
Again there is the best of reasons for believing, on the
trustworthy evidence of George Owen, who lived in the Eliza-
bethan age, that Spoonbills bred in at least one place in
Wales, viz., in Pembrokeshire.! Turning to the legislation
of the sixteenth century, there is a good deal to be elicited
about Spoonbills, implying breeding in the provinces.
First we have the Act of 1534 (supra, p. 167) in which a fine
of eightpence an egg is imposed on robbers of the nests of
the Bittour, Heronne and Shouelard. As " Shouelard " here
* Platalea leucorodia, Lin.
| Professor Newton (Norwich Nat. Trans., Vol. VI., p. 159). The
word " Popeler " occurs at least three times as a surname in York-
shire poll-tax returns of the fourteenth century (" Dictionary of English
and Welsh Surnames " by C. Bardsley), which is not surprising, for not many
names of birds have escaped usage among people at one time or another.
± " Cymmrodonon Record Series," p. 131. I am indebted to the Editor
for Part I.
178
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
clearly means the Spoonbill, this law would almost prove, if
no other evidence were forthcoming, that it was looked
upon as a regular breeder in England. Although in this Act
the Spoonbill is called a " Shouelard," in a later Act (1564,
FOEMEK NESTINGS HAUNTS OF THE SPOONBILL.
8 Elizabeth, c. 15), intended for the compulsory destruction
of Rooks, a second name seems to be used. Here a saving
clause is inserted protecting " Herons, Egrytes, Paupers,
Swannes or Shovelers " from disturbance. Probably Pauper
is a variant of Popeler, the intention being to make the working
of the Act more certain by giving both the mediaeval names
(STATUS OF THE SPOONBILL 179
of the Spoonbill, whereby no loophole was left for an offender
to escape his fine.
In William Harrison's list of birds in 1577 (supra, p. 162)
we get a slightly different spelling — Pawper. Harrison
says: "As for egrets, pawpers, and such like, they are
dailie brought unto us from beyond the sea, as if all the
foule of our countrie could not suffice to satisfie our delicate
appetites."* Two other spellings in old MSS., both of the
fifteenth century, have been discovered by Mr. John Hodgkin,
as I learn from Mr. Mullens. From a list of carvers' terms
he quotes the expression " Papyr ys lowryde [lurid]," while
in the menu of a feast at the wedding of the Earl of Devonshire,
he finds the word " Poper," which comes next to " Mawlard
de la Ryuer." Mr. Hodgkin suggests that the Goose is the
bird here alluded to, in support of which he refers to the
Italian name of " Papero," for a green goose, or a gosling.
("Notes and Queries," March 18th, 1911, p. 216. Reference
supplied by Mr. Mullens.) In the passage quoted, it hardly
seems from the context as if the Goose could have been
intended. A third variation of the name speUed " Popard "
(1413) is cited in " The New English Dictionary," but the
editors refrain from attributing it to any particular species.
To see how various the spellings of birds' names were,
one has only to turn to the " Promptorium Parvulorum," an
English-Latin Dictionary of the fifteenth century. f Here we
have the spellings popler, popelere and poplerd, as well as
schovelerd, schoveler, scholarde and schoues bee, while in the
nearly contemporary " Boke of Nurture" (1452) the latter
name is written shovellewre and shovelere, which half a century
later the poet Drayton (161 3) J abbreviates to shouler. In
the " Fantasticks " of Nicholas Breton (1626) there is the
further alteration to shoulard.
As regards the derivation of the name Popelar or Popler,
Professor Newton pronounces it to be a corruption of Lopeler,
— i.e., Lepelar Dutch, Lepler German, with which Mr. Harting
agrees. § The word means a spoon or a shovel, and bears
* " Holinshed's Chronicles," Bk. III., ch. II.
j- Said to have been composed about 1440 by a friar of King's Lynn.
% In Song XXV., line 353, of the "Poly-Olbion."
§ See Stevenson's " Birds of Norfolk," Vol. III., p. 135, and" Handbook
of British Birds," 2nd ed., p. 210.
180 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
reference to the peculiar shape of the Spoonbill's beak, having
in fact the same signification as shouelard, and other cognate
names in use in Europe.
Dean Turner was apparently not aware of Spoonbills
breeding in England, but there really is nothing remarkable
in his reticence on this point. At the same time his incidental
reference to the Spoonbill in identifying the Albardeola of
Aristotle.* is not suggestive of its being very rare in this
country. But it certainly is very strange that the circumstance
of Spoonbills breeding, or having once bred, in England was
unknown at a much later date to two such careful collectors
of facts as Francis Willughby and John Ray (to say nothing
of Merrett), both of whom were in correspondence with Sir
Thomas Browne, who was quite aware of the fact.
Considering its known range, the Spoonbill is not very
likely ever to have bred in Scotland, where Sibbald, writing
in 1684, merely says of it: " Flue advolat quandoque," nor
is there the slightest evidence of its having nested in Ireland.
Spoonbills and Young Herons considered a Delicacy. —
Throughout the records of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries we get many hints that fish-eating birds, both those
frequenting fresh water and those from the shore, were thought
worthy of the best tables. Young Solan Geese, which, as Ray
said of them, " both smell and taste of herrings," were in high
favour, and other birds which we should now think very rank.
That Spoonbills were considered not only quite fit for the
board, but when young, an equal delicacy with Herons is
certain, of which there is plenty of evidence, apart from
their protection bj r legislation. At the same time the Spoon-
bill was only a summer visitor, not to be looked for at winter
festivities, when the Crane and the Bittern were in season.
One passage furnished by Master Robert Laneham deserves
to be quoted.")" He is treating of the sumptuous entertain-
ment provided for Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in Warwick-
shire in July 1575. Describing the preparations, Laneham
* Evans's translation of Turner, p. 39. Turner's remarks are, as usual,
repeated by Gesner, from whose pages we judge the Albardeola to have been
one of the Egrets.
f " The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth," by
J. Nichols, Vol. I., p. 432.
STATUS OF THE SPOONBILL 181
says : " Upon the first payr of posts " of a fair bridge, twenty
feet wide and seventy feet long, over which the Queen was
to pass " were set too cumly square wyre cages, each a three
feet long, too foot wide ; and by in them live bitters, curluz,
shoovelarz, hearsheawz, godwitz, and such like dainty byrds, '
of the presents of Sylvanus the god of Food." These birds,
together with the fruit with which the second pair of posts
were garnished, were no doubt served to the royal party after
the pageant, but this, Laneham, who was doorkeeper of the
council-chamber, does not tell us.
Although it was the young Spoonbills which were generally
eaten, in England at all events, there is a jjassnge in Gesner's
" Historia Animalium " — possibly on the authority of Albertus
or Turner — which shows that a custom existed of catching
older birds on the shore, presumably by netting them. Gesner,
who gives a very good plate of the Spoonbill, which he remarks
the English call " a schofier vel shouelard," says : " Platea
nostra . . . (translation) " is taken on the sea-shore in
England, and fed in confinement on fish, and the insides of
fowls, and other offal from the kitchen.''* In another place,
relating his experience, he says: " In England I hear that
Spoonbills are tamed ; at Ferrara in Italy I have seen tame
ones, which were fed on kitchen refuse, "f
The following recipe for dressing Spoonbills, written
by that very learned doctor, Thomas Muffett, about 1595,
seems to apply to adult birds, rather than to young ones :
" Platea;. Shovelars feed most commonly upon the Sea-coast
upon cockles and shell-fish ; being taken home and dieted
with new garbage and good meat, they are nothing inferior
to fatted gulls." This was high praise, young Black-headed
Gulls, well fed on bullock's liver, being in great favour for the
table. The native race of Spoonbills has passed away from
England, but the regularity with which migrants return
in the spring to Breydon Broad in Norfolk, and to one or
two spots on the coast of Kent, indicates an inclination to
breed with us again. That they would do so in some of
our Heronries if they were as well protected here as they
have been in Holland, there can be little doubt.
* Op. eit., Liber III , p. C41.
f Op. eit., p. 642.
182 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
The Status of the Bittern* — That in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries the Bittern was diffused throughout the
marshes of England, in its double capacity of a breeder
and a winter visitant, admits of no doubt. And, moreover,
that it continued to be common in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, we have abundant evidence in the
literature of the period. The factor which lias banished it
from Britain was partly drainage, but still more fatal than
drainage has been the use of the gun. We should like to
know rather more both of its English and Irish distribution,
yet must not complain, seeing that there exists a history of it
in the sixteenth century by a good ornithologist of that day,
William Turner, who has left quite a considerable account
as appears from Mr. A. H. Evans's excellent translation of
the " Avium Praecipuarum . . . historia," from which the
following extracts are quoted. f
" Stellaris," says Turner, taking the name from Aristotle,
" is that kind which Englishmen denominate buttour or
bittour, and the Germans call pittour or rosdom. Now it is
a bird like other Herons in its state of body generally, living
by hunting fishes on the banks of swamps and rivers, very
sluggish and most stupid, so that it can very easily be driven
into nets by the use of a stalking horse." This, however,
was not by any means the employment to which a stalking
horse was usually put in England. That Aristotle was aware
of the Bittern's sluggishness is indicated when he says :
" stellaris piger cognominata .... atque, ut cognomen
sonat. iners ociosaque est." " So far as I remember," continues
Turner,' it is nearly of the colour of a Pheasant and the beak
is smeared with mud ; it utters brayings like those of an ass.
Of all birds it aims at men's eyes most readily." That it is a
dangerous bird when wounded is well known, but that its beak
should have been smeared with mud must have been an acci-
dental circumstance, in the examples which Turner examined.
In another place in this valuable bird-book, when
discussing the identity of Aristotle's Onocrotalus, Turner
returns again to the subject of " the loud-sounding lacustrine
* Bolauriis stellaris (Lin.).
f " Turner on Birds," edited l>v A. H. Evans, M. A., 190,'i, pp. xv. and
41. 125, 127.
STATUS OF THE BITTERN 183
bird called Buttor by the English, and Pittour or Rosdomm
by the Germans." Some of his experiences, and that of sundry
German friends, whose veracity he is careful to vouch for,
including " a physician much renowned among the men of
Cullen " are then given regarding its habits. " It sits about
the sides of lakes and marshes, where putting its beak into
the water it gives utterance to such a booming as may easily
be heard an Italian mile away. It gorges fishes, and especially
eels most greedily — nor is there any bird, except the Mergus
[Cormorant], that devours more." As is now well known,
this time-honoured legend of the Bittern immersing its beak
— a fable by no means confined to Germany — or inserting it
into a hollow reed, is entirely without foundation.*
Assisted by a professor and the before-mentioned learned
doctor, Turner went to some trouble in dissecting a Bittern,
his chief object being to examine the sesophagus, which is wide
and expansible. He found "the gullet most capacious, and it
uses it in the place of a crop. It has a belly not like that of other
birds, but lik? that of a dogf ; it also is large and capacious."
He further goes on to describe the Bittern's brown
speckled plumage, so imitative of the reeds it lives in, from
which is taken its name of stellaris, also the shape of the
bird, and its neck " marvellously thick with plumes," and
finally its " very long claws, for that which serves in birds
the purpose of a heel exceeds an inch and a half in length,
on which account our countrymen use it to pick their teeth and
mount it in silver. The middle toe of either foot, which is
longer than the rest, has a prodigious claw, that is to say,
toothed and ssrrated, "
Among the various names bestowed locally on the Bittern,
most of them onomatopoeic, the first in point of date seems
to be myre dromble or mirclrommel. We find Bartholomseus
Anglicus giving the name rather vaguely, while Turner also
employed it. J Literally it means the sluggish bird of the
marshes, but corrupted as it soon became into the shorter
name of miredrum, it signifies the bird which drums or booms.
* One of the first to ridicule it was Sir Thomas Browne, in " Pseudodoxia
Epidemics," ch. XXVII.
t Evans's edn., p. 125. Belon makes the same comparison.
J Evans's edn., p. 38.
Chapter XII.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1st Part).
The Status of the Black-headed Gull.* — Very different from
that of the birds which we have been describing, was the
status of our familiar favourite, the Black-headed Gull, which
one may suppose to have been alwaj-s common, although
probably never so abundant in Great Britain as now. As
it has been clearly shown to be of considerable use to agricul-
turists by feeding upon their enemies, the wireworm and the
larvse of the crane-fly,")" it is to be hoped that it will continue
to multiply, and to receive the protection which it deserves.
What is known about the distribution of this inland breeding
Gull in former times is not much. As in the case of many
other birds, we must begin with Turner, for there is nothing
earlier, but he fortunately has left us rather a good account
of it, J though he does not say that he had ever seen a breeding-
place. To him, as he watched its graceful flight, this bird
was known as the grey gull "a se cob or a see- gull," which
came up rivers, the bird " always querulous and full of noise,"
as it flew round his ship when at anchor. Very descriptive
is his sketch, where he likens it to a Daw in size, but goes
on to note that its wings are sharper and longer. It may
have been on the same great River Thames that John Ray,
an Essex man, made its acquaintance, for he remarks especially
on the number of them which there were at Gravesend.§
Ray also gives a good description both in his "Ornithology"
and in one of his Itineraries.
1. One ancient settlement of Black-headed Gulls, which
has had its ups and downs, but which is still fairly well popu-
lated, is situated at Scoulton in Norfolk, where there is a mere
* Larus ridibundus Lin.
f See Reports issued in 1907 by the Cumberland County Council, and in
1913 by the Suffolk and Essex Fishery Board (" Zoologist," XVIII., p. 181).
% " Turner on Birds," edited by A. H. Evans, pp. 77-79.
§ " The Ornithology," p. 347.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 185
of about seventy acres. How far this historic Gullery goes
back is not known, but it may well date to the thirteenth or
fourteenth century. At that period the manor of Burdeloss-
cum-Scoulton was held by its occupier for the service of
being a chief " lardiner " (or larderer) to the King, and
Stevenson plausibly suggests that the " service " in this
instance may have been the rendering of young Gulls in their
season.* Some may think this far-fetched, but we know that
from early times young Gulls were considered a delicacy, and
further we learn from Sir Thomas Browne that in the seven-
teenth century they were sent to London from Scoulton mere,
a practice which may have been going on a long time. The
name of the parish, Scoulton, however, is in no way connected
with the Gulls, being from the old Ncrse Skule, which means
a shelter, or place of refuge. f Scoulton Mere as far as is know n
has never dried up, and there is no record of the Gulls having
forsaken it, even for a year.
2. Sir Thomas Browne also mentions another Gullery
on Horsey Broad, which is much nearer the sea. Writing
about 1662, he tells his unknown correspondent J that there
were at that time " puets in such plentie about Horsey that
they [i.e., the country folk] sometimes bring them in carts to
Norwich, and sell them at small rates." These two Gulleries,
Scoulton and Horsey, are among the oldest of which naturalists
have any record in England, but that at Horsey is deserted,
the Gulls having shifted to another Broad. §
3. Yet of equal antiquity were the two important
Gulleries in Essex and Staffordshire, the former near Harwich,
the latter — one of the most inland known — at Norbury. Of
the one in Essex there is an excellent description in that curious
old volume, Thomas Fuller's "Worthies of England," || which
has been often quoted, and it is from this source that the
references by Merrett and Charleton to the settlement are
borrowed. Samuel Dale, when writing his History of Harwich,
* " Norwich Naturalists' Trans.," Vol. I., 1871-2, p. 25.
t Munford's " Derivation of the Names of Towns and Villages," p. 182.
J Possibly Sir Nicholas Bacon. «
5 They were breeding there as recently as 1816. (Norwich Nat. Trans.,
in., 243.)
|| 1662, p. 317.
186 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
must have had this same Gullery in his mind, and had probably
visited it, for he comments on the young " Pewits " as being
" esteemed proper for the table."* Another witness, hitherto
overlooked, who had seen these Gulls at their nests, was the
amusing diarist Henry Teonge, a chaplain on board the
" Assistance." Teonge records Ids visit on July 8th, 1678,
to the Gullery : " This day I went with our captaine on
shoare to Puett Hand, where wee tooke above 10 douzen of
young puetts."t It would, however, seem highly probable
that this was not the only settlement of Black-heads at that
period in Essex, for Mr. Miller Christy points out that no
fewer than three islands on the coast bear the name of
Pewit Island. J
4. Of the Staffordshire Gullery Fuller makes no mention,
but we have two excellent accounts, c ne by John Ray in 1662, §
and another, which is still more complete, by Robert Plot in
1686. It was already an ancient settlement when they went
to view it, having flourished on the same estate " ultra hominum
memoriam." Plot gives a clever picture of the lake where
he saw them breeding, with eight men engaged in driving the
young Gulls towards a net, within which are two pens to
put them into when caught. || This quaint illustration has
been given by Mr. W. H. Mullens in " British Birds," Mag.
(Vol. II., p. 220) with a good biography of Plot, and with
Mr. Witherby's permission is again reproduced. Unlike the
Norfolk Puets, which were sold at small rates, and their eggs
used for puddings, the Gulls at Norbury were reckoned of no
little consequence, the young ones, after a course of feeding,
being worth five shillings a dozen, so that in some years the
mere had produced a profit of sixty pounds.
It is difficult to point to the whereabouts of more than
these four Blackdieaded Gulleries in the seventeenth century
in England, but what may be called secondary evidence is to
be had of at least sixteen others, and these shall be briefly
enumerated.
* " Antiquities of Harwich," 1732, p. 402.
t " The Diary of Henry Teonge," 1675-1679, p. 245.
} " The Birds of Essex," p. 267.
§ P, 218.
Natural History of Staffordshire," chap. VII
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 187
5. In Gage's " History and Antiquities of Hengrave " in
Suffolk, we read under date of July 1574, among a great variety
of disbursements, " For iij livers for the puets and the other
mewed fowls, vjd.,"* which is suggestive of a Gullery not far off.
6. The existence of a Gullery near Hunstanton has
been already hinted at (supra, p. 138). Mr. R. Gurney tells
me there is still a place known as Mow Creek at Braneaster.
7. While that another was known to Thomas Pennant
in south Lincolnshire seems probable, f
8. That a Gullery flourished at Hornsea Mere in Yorkshire
in 1693 is to be inferred from the " Diary of Abraham de la
Pryme," as quoted in " The Birds of Yorkshire, "J unless
the birds were Black Terns.
9. There was also a Gullery in 1702 between Barnard
Castle and Bedale, according to the following entry in Bishop
Nicholson's diary : " Thornton Bridge, thousands of the
Blackcap Mews breeding in a moss."§
10. In a description of Delamere Forest in Cheshire in
1617,|| we read of " great store of Fish and Fowl in the Mears,
Puits or Sea Mawes in the flashes " which conveys the
impression of a Guile n r .
11. Time out of mind there has been a settlement of
Black-headed Gulls at Pallinsburn in Northumberland, which
Mr. Harting believes is traceable as far back as about 1750,1}
but they are not mentioned by Wallis.**
12. It is pretty evident that Ravenglass in Cumberland
held an ancient settlement of Gulls, at least nine allusions to
Gulls are met with in the Household Book of Naworth Castle ft
which commences in 1612. Macpherson supposes that there was
also a second Gullery which furnished the castle as well.Ji
* P. 202.
f " British Zoology," II., p. 541.
1 Vol. II., p. 657. From the Publications of the Surtees Society (LIV.,
p. 272).
§ As quoted in " The Birds of Yorkshire," Vol. II., p. 070.
|| Quoted in Coward's " Fauna of Cheshire," Vol, T., p. 426.
1 "Field," Feb. 16th, 1884. Bewick alludes to them in 1804.
** "The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland," 1769.
ff Naworth is near Carlisle, and was the seat of Lord William Howard,
whose household books have been printed for the Surtees Society. (Trans.,
Vol LVIIT., p. 90, etseq.)
H " Fauna of Lakeland," by H. A. Macpherson, p. 427.
] 88 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
13. Besides, judging from a passage in the " Antiquities
of Westmoreland,"* there must have been a settlement at
Helflack Moss, also in Cumberland.
14. According to a quotation in Pennant's " British
Zoology "f there was a Gullery near Portsmouth, which
produced to its owner forty pounds a j'ear by the sale
of " Pewits," and it is suggested by Kelsall and Munn
that the site may have been on Pewit (locally Pewty)
Island, t
15. From the Household Book of Hurstmonceux Castle
in Sussex (1643 to 1649) we learn that the fare included puets,
sea gulls and sea mewes, but§ whether this can be accepted as
proof of a Gullery on the manor seems doubtful.
16. Mr. Harting brings forward evidence of an ancient
Gullery near Eastbourne in Sussex, but it is not quite clear
that the Gulls nesting there were of the present species. ||
17. A remark of John Aubrey's points to the presence
of a seventeenth century Gullery in Wiltshire. : " Sea-mewes.
Plentie of them at Colerne-downe ; . . ." — En inland parish. ^f
18. In 1602 Richard Carew, a Cornish historian,
enumerates Gulls end " Pewets," (by which he does not
mean Lapwings), among the birds of Cornwall, and says
they breed upon little islands, laying their eggs on the
grass.**
Here the list ends, but it is possible that there were Black-
headed Gulleries in the north and east of England, and certainly
there must have been more in the west than the four here
mentioned. One indication of it is that " puets " are
repeatedly named among the table provisions for Judges on
the Western Circuit, and this, be it noticed, was always in July,
just the time at which the young Gulls would have been
ripe. Unfortunately these Assize accounts only run from
* By J. Nicolson and R. Bum, 1777. (Vol. I., p. 225.)
t "B.Z.," II., p. 543.
I " Birds of Hampshire," p. 335.
§ Communicate! to the Sussex Archfeological Society (Vol. XL VIII.), by
T. Barrett Lennard.
|j " Zoologist," 1891. p. 194.
•J " The Natural History of Wiltshire," edited by J. Britton, p. 65.
** " The Survey of Cornwall," 1811 edn,, p. 109.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 18!)
1596 to 1601,* but in that short time Puets are entered ten
times in the lists of eatables served up to the representatives
of the law.
There is no information to hand for Ireland and Scotland,
but as regards Wales we have John Ray's journal, in which he
notes of Calcley, one of the Pembrokeshire islands, which he and
Willughby visited on June 10th, 1662 : " In one part of this
island the puits and gulls, and sea-swallows' nests lie so thick
that a man can scarce walk but he must needs set his foot
upon them."f Further than this, from Thomas Pennant's
" Tour in Wales," we are able to say that about 1781 and no
doubt earlier, Gulleries of this species flourished at two lakes
in Carnarvonshire, Llyn Llydan and Llyn Conwy. $ §
The Young Gulls commonly Fatted and Eaten. — Nowada3's
people eat the eggs of the Black-headed Gull, although
they are very inferior to those of the real Peewit, but
formerly the young were thought preferable. The mode of
catching them, by driving them into nets before they could
fly has been alreadj' alluded to. After that, placed in pens,
and well supplied with bullock's liver, they soon fattened,
and were served at table as wanted, but others elected to
have them fed with corn or curds from the dairy, which may
have imparted a pleasanter flavour. The excellent Thomas
Fuller, who had a high opinion of " puetts " as a table dish, in
giving his experience says : " Being young they consist only
of bones, feathers, and lean flesh, which hath a raw gust of
the sea. But poulterers take them then, and feed them with
* Printed in " The Camden Miscellany," 185S-9 : the accounts enumerate
many birds besides " puets." Gulls are named thirteen times in the
month of July, probably young Herring Gulls from the rocks, the Great
Bustard comes in once (when the Assizes were held at Salisbury, June 23rd.
1600), Turkeys, under the name of Gannyes twice (pp. 19, 27), Oxen and
Kyne — supposed to be Dunlins — once (p. 26), Partridges and Quails verv
often, Black Grouse four times, the Woodcock only twice. Puffins are
associated with fish, while young Herons, esteemed a festival dish, are brought
to the judges under the appellation of Heronshaws, on no less than fourteen
occasions.
t " Memorials of John R,ay," p. 175.
J "Tour," Vol. II., pp. 140, 180. These places have probably been long
deserted, see Forrest's " Banna of North Wales," p. 380.
§ For a full and excellent account of existing British Gulleries, up to
1884, by Mr. J. E. Harting, see the " Field " for that year, pp 165, 204. The
list has been well carried on by Mr. Robert Gurney in The N. and Norwich
Naturalists' Trans, up to 1919 (Vol. X., p. 416).
190 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
gravel and curds, the one to scour, the other to fat them in
a fortnight, and their flesh thus recruited is most delicious."*
To the Norwich philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, ever
on the look-out for paradoxes, it seemed inconsistent to eat
such birds, and at the same time to refuse other animals whose
food was no more impure, f but we have seen that the plan
was to diet them, by which means this objection was partly
overcome. In the " Health's Improvement " of Or. Thomas
Muiiett, the dictum of a physician in the reign of Elizabeth — ■
which refers apparently to this species — inclines to the views
of Sir Thomas Browne, declaring that " Sea-mews and Sea-cobs
feed upon garbage and fish [and are] thought therefore an
unclean and bad meat ; but being fatted (as Gulls used to be)
they alter their ill nature, and become good."
Perhaps in no Household accounts are there more refer-
ences to Black-headed Gulls than in the entertaining papers
of Naworth Castle, before alluded to. Here, as Macpherson
shows, J we come across allusions to the number of young
Gulls brought to the larderer, the dates at which they come
in, a earjxnter's charges for making a pen, and such entries
as " a knife to cut the gull's meat," and again " a crook for
the gull house ' — this latter for the cook to hook them by the
neck when wanted. Two or three times they are brought
to the castle w itli " sampier," i.e., samphire for pickle, or with
young " hernsues," likewise a dainty. Puets always made
good money, but the highest price paid for them is that
given by Thorold Rogers, who says they were retailed to
certain Oxford college sin 1569-70 at 2s. 3d. and 3s. 4d. apiece. §
Karnes formerly employed for the Black-headed Gidl. —
It is natural that, bearing the name of Peivet or Puet,
these small Gulls should be commonly supposed by editors
of sixteenth and seventeenth century accounts to be Lapwings.
By some inadvertency this mistake has even got into the
fourth edition of Yarrell's " British Birds, "|| but it must be
* " The Worthies of England," p. 318.
■f " Pseudodoxia Epidemiea," chap. XXV.
% " Fauna of Lakeland," p. 427.
§ " A History of Agriculture and Prices," Vol. III., pp. 198, COG and
pre!.
|| Vol. III., p. 286.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 191
admitted that the similarity of the names — both of which
are derived from the cry of the birds —is very misleading.
Although pvit or puet, a name distinctly expressive of their
note, Mas the almost universal appellation in former daj-s for
these Gulls, in Kent they were known as crocurds or crockers,
literally birds which croaked. We meet with the crocard
among the good things to be served to Henry VIII. and Iris
court. Thus at Elthnm Palace, a favourite resort of the
Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs, the table viands in 1531
included crocurds, as well as winders (Wigeon), runners (Rails),
grows (Black Grouse) and peions (Pigeons).* Dr. Ticehurst
tells us that the name is by no means obsoletef in Kent.
1603. George Owen.
We are now in the seventeenth century, and with it a
wide field is opened to the enquirer, for ornithology at length
begins to find itself upon a firmer footing. Its devotees are
still few and far between, but the study of birds is no longer
looked upon as beneath the notice of learned men ; in fact,
a few of the best brains in England occupied themselves with
it more or less, in conjunction with botany. Not the least
of this little band were John Ray, Francis Willughby, Ralph
Johnson, Jessop of Sheffield, Sir Thomas Browne, and a
Welshman named Owen.
George Owen, lord of Kernes, a native of Pembrokeshire,
who died in 1613, has left behind him a very singular account
of the birds of that county, J in which he mentions, among other
things, the breeding of the Spoonbill and Crane. Part, of his
narrative, referring to the abundance of the Woodcock, and
the modes of taking them, appears to be worth quoting, and
is as follows : " If any easterly wind be aloft," says Owen,
in his quaint English, " Ave shall be sure to have him [i.e., the
Woodcock], a fortnight, and sometimes three weeks before
Michaelmas, and for plenty it is almost incredible. For when
the chief time of haunt is [i.e., the autumn migration], we have
more plenty of that kind of fowl than all other sorts laid
* " Archaeologia," 1786, p. 154.
j " Birds of Kent," p. 511.
J Supra, p. 177. The whole of Owen's relation is given in the
" Zoologist " for 1895 (p. 241).
192 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
together, the chiefest plenty between Michaelmas and Christ-
mas, and in these three months he visitest most houses [dead
ones, that is, are brought in for eating]. Their chief taking
is in cockeroades in woods, with nets erected up between two
trees, where in cocke shoote time (as it is termed) which is the
twilight, a little after the breaking of the day, and before the
closing of the night, they are taken, sometimes two, three or
four at a fall [of the net]. I have myself oftentimes taken
six at one fall, and in one roade at an evening taken eighteen ;
and it is no strange thing to take a hundred, Or six score, in one
wood in twenty-four hours if the haunt be good, and much
more hath been taken ; though not usually. . . . The plenty
of this, and other kind of fowl hath been such in a hard winter,
as I have heard a gentleman of good sort and credit report that
he had bought in St. David's two Woodcocks, two Snipe, and
certain Teal and Blackbirds for a penny."
If the Woodcocks arrived in Pembrokeshire, as Owen
tells us, a fortnight before Michaelmas, that is about the 15th
of September, their habits must have changed somewhat, as
Welsh sportsmen do not expect them so early as that now, nor
do they any longer come in the same plenty as formerly.
The cocke shoote or cockshot referred to by Owen was a
well-known device, consisting of one or more nets suspended
in some convenient ride, while the cockeroades were the
aforesaid rides or glades, up and down which the Woodcocks
were expected to fly about twilight. The practice of netting
Woodcocks was so general as to suggest the employment of
the phrase " cock-shut time " as a synonym for twilight as
in the play of " Richard III."
1605. Caroltts Clusius.
We next come to consider the labour of a great Flemish
botanist, de l'Escluse, a physician of Arras, whose name is
usually latinised into Clusius. To criticise Clusius's figure
of the Solan Goose to be found in the " Exoticorum Libri
decern,"* a quaint, but on the whole creditable representation,
would hardly be just. The block drawn and engraved from
a sketch by Clusius's correspondent, James Plateau, which by
the good offices of Dr. B. D. Jackson I am able to reproduce,
* 1605, Bk. V.. Ch. VII., p. 103.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
193
is good for when it was done, though it would be easy to
discover faults in its composition. Clusius, who is less known
to fame as an ornithologist than as one of the early fathers
of botany, gives figures of about fourteen other birds in this
volume, including the Dodo and the Great Auk, but they
are somewhat rudely done. The Great Auk is wrongly
represented in the attitude of a Goose, but the Penguin from
Magellan is correctly given an upright attitude, with the
remark, " illas autem a pinguedine qui erant prseditse,
SOLAN GOOSE (AFTER CLTJSIUs).
Pinguins appelarunt. . . .'
however, is questionable.*
This derivation of its name,
1613. Michael Drayton.
The famous " Poly-Olbion " of Drayton professes to
include the animal products of the various counties which
it versifies, yet Norfolk and Suffolk are dismissed in scanty
fashion, but to the birds of Lincolnshire the poet devotes
eighty-eight lines naming thirty-seven species of birds, with
which however, he had evidently had no personal acquaintance.
With these we have not here to do, but in the first edition of
* See Newton's " Dictionary of Birds," p. 703.
194
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
the " Poly-Olbion " (1613-22) there is something which calls
for remark in connection with the Solan Goose. This is a map
of Devonshire, quaintly embellished with symbolical figures,
of which one is the Nymph of Luncly standing between
Neptune and Amphitrite, with a Gannet on her head and two
Conies at her feet. The accompanying poem to these appro-
priate symbols runs as follows : —
" This Lundy is a nymph to idle toys inclin'd,
And all on pleasure set, doth wholly give her mind
To see upon her. shore her fowl and conies feed,
And wantonly to hatch the birds of Ganymede."
The idea, which is rather fanciful, is supposed to have
been derived by the poet from the translator of De la More's
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 195
Life of Edward II. A photograph of the figures by Mr.
Donald Payler, giving their exact size as in the map, which
accompanies the poem, is reproduced.
1633. Lord William Howard.
Here it may be convenient to refer to certain passages in
The Household Books of Lord William Howard of Naworth,
a border castle in Cumberland.* On August 25th, 1612, the
larderer writes : " My Lord Crainston's man bringing solom-
geese, Vs." On August 14th, 1623, he enters : " To the
Lord Crainston's man bringing iiij Solamosse geese iij, ihj,"
and on August 23rd, 1633 — ten years later — "To 2 boyes
bringing 10 sollemgeese from my Lord Cranston X.s." It is
possible that in the second entry, not Gannets, but domestic
geese from " the moss," or grasslands of the Solway, are
intended. Mr. H. S. Gladstone finds these lands marked as
Solanmoss or Sollan Mosse in an old map of 1654, see the
" Scottish Naturalist," 1912, p. 90.
1654. Robert Gordon.
Sir William Brereton's account of the Bass Rock in 1635,
and William Harvey's in 1641, entertaining as they are,
having been given at length in another work.f need hardly
be repeated, but the story of the Bass by Robert Gordon
of Stralloch seems too important to be omitted. It is here
quoted from an excellent translation supplied by Mr. H. S.
Gladstone, from Blaeu's great Dutch " Geography," to which
Gordon contributed. J
" On the very top [of the Bass Rock in Scotland] is a
little chapel, and a remarkably clear spring ; there is barely
enough pasture for twenty sheep. The inhabitants have no
coals in the winter, but burn for the most part the nests of
birds. This island has (besides other birds which the [adjacent]
island of May also produces), a quite wonderful bird usually
called the Bass Goose, somewhat smaller than a Common
Goose, but much fatter, for they live on the Herrings, and
have the same taste when eaten. They surpass in fatness
* Printed for the Surtees Soc. (Trans. LVIIL).
f " The Gannet : a Bird with a History," pp. 197-201.
| " Geographia Blavianae, Volumen Sextum," 1654 (Lib. XII., XIII.).
196 EAELY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
all other birds, of whatever kind they be. These Geese come
in the month of April and May to this island, and then every-
body must be quiet, but when they have begun to make their
nests they are not frightened at any noise. The people of
Edinburgh sell their feathers (which are nice for making
beds) dearly enough to their neighbours, who pay twenty-
five shillings [Scotch, worth a penny] for one Goose. Each
of these Geese lays one egg, and that at least once in the year.
They place their eggs so cleverly that if anyone takes one out
of the nest, he cannot put it back in the same place. They
do not sit on their eggs hke other birds, but set the sole of
their foot on the egg, and thus hatch the young one. While
they are chicks they have ashen-grey feathers, which become
white when they are full grown. They have a long neck,
hke the Crane's, and a very sharp beak, as long as our longest
finger, and yellow [? white] in colour. The bone which we
commonly call " the bril " [the furculum] in other birds can
be separated from the breast-bone, but in these Geese it
cannot ; indeed, so firm is it that no force can divide
it, and it is attached in this manner to the breast-bone in
order that when they chase the Herrings, and plunge
into the sea, they should not break their necks by their
extreme violence. In the month of August [most of] the
young ones are taken and are sold to the neighbours at a
high price, and the others fly away until the following year.
Many of them, nevertheless, are killed in the following-
manner. The sailors prepare a smooth board, and make
it white, and fasten herrings on it ; which board they make
fast to the stern of a fishing-boat. The Geese, seeing the
Herrings, try to seize them with their beak, and drive it so
deep into the board that they cannot pull it out again, and
thus are taken, or rather take themselves. Moreover, if
these Geese ahght so far from the sea that they cannot see
it, they can neither raise their bodies from the ground nor
fly away."
The notion that the egg of a Solan Goose when once taken
up cannot be replaced, which the people of the place seem to
have also told William, Harvey in 1641, is a fiction, but a very
persistent one, for we get it again from Morer in 1702 and
from Defoe in 1722.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 197
1653. Leonhard Baldner.
Leonhard Baldner was a fowler and river fisherman at
Strasburg, whose paintings of the birds of his native Rhine,
together with a written account of them, were bought by
Francis Willughby, when passing with John Ray and Philip
Skippon through that city in 1663, see " The Ornithology "
(Preface et seq.). At Nuremberg Willughby also bought a
volume of bird pictures, still in existence at Wollaton Hall,
Notts, the residence of Lord Middleton, where his collection
of medals is also preserved. Baldner's paintings, fresh as
when the colour was laid on, are still in the British Museum,
bound in a book, only twelve inches by eight, together with a
translation of his notes, made from the German for Willughby
after his return to England.* Full justice has been done
to the Strasburg fisherman by Robert Lauterborn, by whom
his work was printed and edited in 1903.f Lauterborn
enumerates other copies of the Baldner MS., with paintings,
of which one in Cassel, containing a hundred and fifty coloured
drawings, is stated to be the most perfect, but the English
copy in the British Museum is the earliest known, the preface
to it being dated Dec. 31st, 1653. The following is a list of
Baldner's plates numbered according to the London copy, with
some (translated) extracts from his remarks.
1. Mute Swan.
2. Black-throated Diver.
" This great See-flutter I shot the 12th of December
1649 " (MS.).
3 Pink-footed Goose. The description better applies
to a Bean Goose.
4. Brent Goose. " I had two the 27th February, 1649,
they are altogether unknown in our country " (MS.).
See Ray's comment in " The Ornithology," p. 360.
5. Cormorant.
6. Red-breasted Merganser.
7. Goosander.
* AdcU. MS. 6485 and MS. 6486.
f " Das Vogel- Fisch- und Thierbuch des Strassburger Fischers.
Leonhard Baldner, aus dem Jahre 1666." Edited with an introduction by
Robert Lauterborn, 1903. This volume is the subject of an excellent article
by Dr. Hans Gadow in the " Field " of Oct. 26th, 1907.
198 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
8. Golden-eye Duck.
v 9. Mallard. " They have a very quick scent, in so
much that they smell out a man, though they do
not see him, if they have but the wind from him "
(MS.).
10. Pintail.
11. Pochard.
12. Gadwall. Baldner's description of the Brog Vogel
does not fit this species.
13. Wigeon.
14. Shoveller.
15. Great Crested Grebe. " This Fowl 1 shot, and some
more I got, which were taken in a net. There are
but few of them " (MS.).
16. Ferruginous Duck.
17. Tufted Duck.
18. Garganey Teal.
19. Smew.
20. Little Grebe. " Gome to us about St. Michael
Feast, and tarry till Easter " (MS.).
21. Teal.
22. Osprey. " June 15th, 1654, I got an Osprey ....
I found a stone of carp in his throat " (MS.).
23. Great White Egret. The description applies to the
Common Heron.
24. Heron.
25. Purple Heron. Bittern. A part of Baldner's descrip-
tion applies to the Bittern, and a part to the Purple
Heron, while it is evidently the latter in immature
plumage that is represented in his drawing. " One
may hear their cry," he says, " half a mile off,
which they lift up on high through their long nostrils,
and the bill, and this the female does more than the
male, as much as I know of them.* They abide
with us a twelve month, and hatch two or three
young ones." One which Baldner dissected con-
tained an entire mole.
* This is disputed, some naturalists even doubting if the female booms
at all. Miss Turner's experience is that it sometimes utters a soft booming
sound ("British Birds," Mag., XIII., p. 8).
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 199
26. Night Heron. " Sent me the 24th of April 1649
from a fisher at Pothsenhausen, who had found him
dead" (MS.).
27. Avocet. " This Uberschnabel was catched in 1647 "
(MS.).
28. Squacco Heron. " The 4th of July 1646 I shot
this Fowl just as he is drawn, none could give him
a fit name, .... the 24th of May 1651 I shot
again such a Fowl " (MS.).
29. Spotted Redshank. Represented in the painting
in its summer plumage.
30. Green Sandpiper ?
49. Do. do.
31. Black Tern, adult. " They arrive in our country
in the month of May the 2nd of May
1651 I killed four of them with one shot" (MS.).
34. Black Tern, young.
32. Caspian Tern. " This great Sea-mew I shot the
23rd of May 1649, such like has not been seen in
our country . . . ." (MS.).
33. Common Tern.
35. Black-headed Gull.
36. Lesser Tern.
37. Gull ? Here it is difficult to decide from its very
dark colour for what Gull the painting is intended.
38. Coot.
39. Spotted Crake.
40. Water-Rail.
41. Redshank.
42. Golden Plover.
43. Lapwing.
44. Ruff. See note by Ray in " The Ornithology,"
p. 304.
45. Ringed Plover. "They come into our country in
the month of June, and tarry here till October"
(MS.).
46. Snipe. The description applies to the Snipe " an
extraordinary good fowl, very savoury and always
fat " (MS.), but the picture represents a Grey
Phalarope.
200 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
47. Common Sandpiper.
48. Kentish Plover. The description is probably intended
for a Jack Snipe, but the picture represents a Kentish
Plover.
50. Dunlin. " The young ones come to us in the month
of September, many of which I shot " (MS.).
51. Water Pipit, or Meadow Pipit.
52. Kingfisher.
53. Pied Wagtail.
54. Grey Wagtail.
Dipper. No description in the London MS.
Eider Duck. Do. do.
Curlew. Do. do.
With this the Birds end, and are followed, at all events
in the London copy, by descriptions of forty species of fresh-
water fish, with illustrations, as well as by about fifty-two
mammals, insects and molluscs.
1662. Sir Thomas Browne.
In 1902 an excellent edition of Browne's treatises on
Birds and Fish was published, with notes by Thomas Southwell,
assisted by Professor Newton,* but the complete edition of
his works is that by Simon Wilkin. f Among other topics
on which Browne touches is the migration of birds, and here
he is the first English writer to offer us anything definite.
In the seventeenth century not very much was known about
the movements of birds, indeed the majority of scientific men
were still reluctant to abandon the theory of hibernation,
one of the chief exponents of which had been Olaus Magnus,
the Swede. Absurd as it now seems to us, it was not more
so than a much later theory, viz.,, that birds migrated to
the moon, an idea promulgated in all good faith in 1703 by
F. Roberts, and subsequently by Charles Morton. $ Browne
knew very well that it was from oversea countries, and not
from the moon, that birds came. Forced on his notice every
autumn, far more in Norfolk than if he had lived in one of
* " Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk from the MSS.
of Sir Thomas Browne." Edited by Thomas Southwell, 1902.
t Issued in 1835 in four volumes.
X " Harleian Miscellany," Vol. IT., p. 578.
(fcs~. cu Lry^{_c^.J^ A^-^'t
tt^-^'
JU^i^H cay
for Su* •^izM^^*™*
SIR THOMAS BROWNE TO DR. MERRETT.
(Southwell's edn. of Browne's "Natural History.")
202 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
the central counties, his was much too inquiring a mind
not to attempt an investigation of migration, accordingly
we find him writing as follows : —
" Beside the ordinary birds which keep constantly in
the country, many are discoverable both in winter and summer
which are of a migrant nature and exchange their seats
according to the season. Those which come in the spring
coming for the most part from the southward, those which
come in the autumn or winter from the northward. So that
they are observed to come in great flocks with a north-east
wind [in the autumn] and to depart [southwards] with a south-
west [at that season]." I have added in brackets what Browne
apparently intends to be understood in the last sentence.
In another passage, evidently not quite certain in his
own mind about the direction of the wind preferred by birds
in the autumn, he says they come with a north-west — not a
north-east — wind. This correction occurs in his tract on
Hawking,* where, after alluding to the speed of trained
Falcons, Browne says : —
" How far the hawks, merlins, and wild-fowl which come
unto us with a north-west wind in the autumn, fly in a day,
there is no clear account : but coming over sea their flight
hath been long or very speedy. For I have known them
to light so weary on the coast, that many have been taken
with dogs, and some knocked down with staves and stones."
The question of birds and wind has been much debated
by ornithologists, and very opposite opinions have been
held, and still are held, as to the effect of wind — both in its
direction and force — on migratory birds, especially on the
east coast of England. f
* Wilkin's edition of "Works," Vol. IV., tract 5.
■f At the present da)', a north-east or east wind, not so strong as to be a
gale, is considered by the majority of observers on the Norfolk coast to be
the most favourable for bringing over autumnal migrants to Norfolk and
Suffolk, and tho same rule probably applies to all the eastern counties. Any
birds which arrive on the coast so weary that they can, as Browne says,
be knocked down with stones, are delayed birds, and probably the survivors
of many others which perished in the sea. Any also which are to be seen
arriving in the morning, against a west wind, or during the day, whether
tired or not, are to be looked upon as delayed birds.
By that term is meant birds which, with a moderate wind at their
backs, would have made the passage across the North Sea in one night, and
been on English soil before daybreak, if not impeded.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 203
It is to Browne that we owe, among many other things,
the first intimation of the Solan Goose in Norfolk, of winch
he says : —
" A white, large and strong bill'd fowle called a Ganet
which seemes to bee the greater sort of Larus, whereof I met
with one kild by a greyhound neere swaffam, another in
marshland while it fought and would not bee forced to take
wing, another intangled in an herring net wch taken aliue
was fed with herrings for a while . . . . "
Browne alludes to the very great store of Partridges, a
species which, as already shown by the le Straunge accounts,
was abundant in Norfolk in the sixteenth century, but goes
on to say that the Red-legged Partridge (Caccabis rufa) was
not found. The date of its introduction to England has been
commonly placed at towards the end of the eighteenth century,
but it would seem that a few French Partridges were brought
to England before that. In November 1682 a brace of
" curious outlandish partridges," which may have been of
this species, were sent to Belvoir Castle.* There is doubt
about these, but none about some which were bred at Wim-
bledon in Surrey, prior to 1751, f and before that they were
known to have been turned out at Windsor. $
Browne is almost the only author who vouchsafes any-
thing definite about the Quail, which was by no means such
a common bird in England as some have supposed, though
probably more abundant in Ireland. §
Alluding to the Sheld-Duck, Browne informs his corre-
spondent that Barganders, i.e., burrow-ganders, bred about
Norrold, which Stevenson identifies as Northwold near Stoke-
Ferry, adding that they are " not so rare as Turner makes
them."
Concerning other Norfolk wild-fowl, about which Browne
has a good deal which is valuable, some might consider the
identity of Arts, Ankers and Noblets, all local names, to be
* 12th Report of The Historical MSS. Commission, II., p. 7S.
f " Natural History of Birds " by George Edwards, IV., p. 223.
| Daniels, " Rural Sports," III., p. 95.
§ Robert Payne, writing in 1589, says it was plentiful, and that a dozen
could be bought for threepence ("Irish Archaeological Soc." 1841), of which
later records are confirmatory.
204 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
lost. But the first named can be identified, for according
to the " Ornithologia Svecica " of Nilsson, Aria is Swedish
for a Garganey Teal, and was probably used in Norfolk
for any Teal. In 1S24 C. S. Girdlestone states that Arps,
evidently a variant of the same word, was a name used in
some parts of Norfolk for Tufted Ducks,* and it is mentioned
again by Bewick in 1826.f Noblet was probably some
species of duck with a knob on its head, which may mean
a tubercle, such as the Sheld-Duck and Scoter possess, or it
may mean a crest. Forby gives Knobble-tree as a provincial
name for head.} With regard to Anker, this would be the
same as ancre, that is, a nun, an old name sometimes given
to the white male Smew.
Professor Newton was always in hope that a fair copy of
Browne's two " Accounts " would some day turn up, being
of opinion that the papers in the British Museum were but a
rough copy. If that be so, it may account for the omission
of the Owl, Pheasant, Snipe, and Wood-Pigeon ; that some
pages of the original are missing seems almost certain. At the
same time it was evidently not Browne's intention on this
occasion to give his correspondent an enumeration of all the
small birds, which would have considerably extended the list.
As it now stands, it embraces eighty-nine species, to which
are subsequently added in his letters to Ch. Merrett a few others,
viz., the Hobbj^, Merlin, Waxwing, " Beebird " (Spotted
Flycatcher), Tufted Duck, Garganey Teal, Golden-eye and
Guillemot. Browne's enumeration commences with the birds
of prey, but it can hardly be said to possess any order, and
much pertinent matter is omitted, some of which had found
a place in his " Enquiries into vulgar and common errors,"
as for example what he has to say on the Bittern.§
Who Browne's correspondent was must be a matter of
conjecture. It is clear that these notes on Birds and Fishes — ■
so carefully penned and original — were not intended for Dr.
Ch. Merrett, nor were they meant for the use of Ray, who in
* "Norwich Naturalist^' Trans.," Vol. II., p. 396.
•f " History of British Birds," Vol. II., p. 328, note. On the authority of a
Norfolk correspondent.
% " Vocabulary of East Anglia," 1830, Vol. II., p. 187.
§ Wilkin's edition of Works (1835), Vol. II., pp. 521-3
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 205
1662-6S was not occupying himself with birds, although much
engaged in botany. It is possible that Browne drew them
up for Sir Philip Skippon of Wrentham, with whom he was
acquainted, but more likely still is the hint thrown out by
Evelyn that they were intended for Sir Nicholas Bacon, who
it would seem at one time resided in Norfolk.
The words with which they commence ; "I willingly obey
your commands in setting down," etc., clearly show that they
were written for some one who took an interest in natural
history, and the tract on " Plants mentioned in Scripture "
was addressed to Bacon.*
* See Wilkin's edition (Vol. III., p. 381, and IV., p. 191), also " Norfolk
Families," by Walter Rye (pp. 16, 17).
Chapter XIII.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (2nd Pabt).
1665. John Evelyn.
John Evelyn, though not an ornithologist, was a virtuoso
of great talents, and has some claim to be considered the
founder of the Royal Society, while his visit to Norwich, where
he made the acquaintance of a kindred spirit in Sir Thomas
Browne, is almost historical. Evelyn kept a careful journal,
and in October 1671 he puts down as follows : " Next morning
[October 17th] I went to see Sir Thomas Browne, with whom
I had some time corresponded by letter, though I had never
seen him before ; his whole house and garden being a paradise
and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collection, especially
medals, books, plants and natural things. Amongst other
curiosities, Sir Thomas had a collection of the eggs of all the
fowl and birds he could procure, that country (especially the
promontory of Norfolk) being frequented, as he said, by several
kinds which seldom or never go farther into the land, as Cranes,
Storks, Eagles, and variety of water-fowl. He led me to see all
the remarkable places of this ancient city. . ." Sir T.
Browne's collection of eggs and the dried " cases " of the
Stork and other birds in his cabinet of rarities have long since
perished, and a hundred and twenty years ago his house was
also demolished, but some carving from it is still preserved.
From Evelyn's description it appears to have had a garden
behind, but it must have been a small one.*
Recording a visit to Charles the Second's London mena-
gerie or rather collection of waterfowl, Evelyn says : —
" February 9th [1665]. Dined at my Lord Treasurer's.
... I went to St. James' Park, where I saw various animals,
* Browne's library of books, which doubtless embraced many treasures,
and his MSS. were kept together until 1830, and then sold ; his copy of
Justus Lipsius, presented in 1666 to the City of Norwich, is still preserved in
the Free Library.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 207
and examined the throat of the Onocrotylus, or pelican, a fowl
between a stork and a swan ; a melancholy water-fowl, brought
from Astracan by the Russian Ambassador ; it was diverting
to see how he would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or
flounder, to get it right into his gullet at its lower beak which,
being filmy, stretches to a prodigious wideness, when it devours
a great fish." This was perhaps the same Pelican described
by Ray and Willughby.* " Here was also a small water-fowl,
not bigger than a moorhen, that went almost quite erect,
like the penguin of America [Great Auk] ; it would eat as much
fish as its whole body weighed ; I never saw so unsatiable a
devourer, yet the body did not appear to swell the bigger."
It was probably a Guillemot or Razorbill. Evelyn next goes
.. on to say something of the Scotch Solan Goose or Gannet :
" The Solan Geese here are also great devourers, and are
said soon to exhaust all the fish in a pond " Dr.
Edward Browne, who must have known his father's friend,
has something to tell us about St. James's Park, in February,
1664, one year earlier than Evelyn's visit. " I saw many
strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny
sheep, a white raven, a great parrot, a storke, which having
broke its own leg, had a wooden leg set on, . . . ."•(- He does
not allude to the Solan Geese mentioned by Evelyn. The
collection was evidently quite considerable, judging from
the preceding extracts, and also from some allusions to it in
Charleton's " Exercitationes de Differentiis et Nominibus
Animalium " (1677). We have a reminiscence of it in the name
Bird-Cage Walk.
1666. Christopher Merrett.
In the " PJnax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum," of
Dr. C. Merrett, we are in possession of the earliest printed
catalogue of English birds, although it only extends to
fifteen pages, and the information afforded is rather poor,
neither has much attempt been made at classification, which,
joined to one or two avoidable mistakes in the text, probably
induced Ray to condemn the production as Merrett's bungling
Pinax. The life and labours of Christopher Merrett have been
* " The Ornithology," p. 327.
f Browne's " Works," edited by Wilkin, Vol. I., p. 50.
208
EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
made the subject of very good biographical articles by Mr. J.
E. Harting and Mr. W. H. Mullens.*
1668. Francis Willughby.
Francis Willughby, whose name has been held in such
high honour, was born in 1635 and died in 1672 at Middleton
Hall, near Tanworth, in Warwickshire. The house still stands,
and is the property of his descendants, but has been altered
and added to since Willughby's day. Lord Middleton, its
MIDDLETON HALL, 1918.
present owner, to whom the reader is indebted for the view
of it, possesses good oil paintings of the naturalist,")" and of
his mother. Lady Cassandra Willughby, the former has long
combed hair, and both of them are in costumes suggestive
of Cromwelhans of a Puritan type.
* The "Field," Oct. 10th, 1903, and "British Birds," Mag. (Vol.11.,
pp. 109, 151). Mr. Mullens possesses Thomas Pennant's copy of the
"Pinax," with his book-plate, but it only contains one or two brief
memoranda.
f Reproduced by Sir William Jardine, in "The Naturalists' Library"
(Orn., Vol. V.), and the original of the bust at Cambridge, as well as of the
tablet in Southwell Cathedral.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
209
Wilhighby's first contribution to ornithology, and indeed
the only one of which he can be considered as sole author, was a
TABLET TO FRANCIS WILLUGHBY.
Table of Birds drawn up for Dean Wilkins, afterwards Bishop
of Chester ; Professor Boulger, however, is of opinion that here
210 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
he received Ray's assistance, which is very possible, as they
worked so much in common. This elaborate " Table " appeared
in Wilkins's " Real Character And a Philosophical Language,"
which was printed in 1668, and in it eight pages are devoted
to a scientific arrangement of birds by Willughby. The
system on which it is based divides all known genera into
nine groups, viz., six for the reception of land species, com-
mencing with the carnivorous birds (with which he associates
the Cuckoo, Raven, Parrot and Woodpecker) ; and three for
aquatic species, that is such as live " near wet places," or are
" much in the water." At the conclusion of the List,
Willughby adds a few remarks which as coming from his pen
are interesting, but they treat of only six or seven species,
namely, the Wild Swan, of which he remarks, " Hooper, having
the wind-pipe going down to the bottom of the breastbone "
— wild geese " whereof one [kind] is black from the breast to
the middle of the belly, called Brant-Goose " — " the Widgeon-
kind," and " the Teal-kind," to which " should be reduced that
other fowl . . . called Gargane." He concludes with one
observation, to which naturalists would hardly now assent, viz.,
that "to the Gull-kind doth belong that other Bird, of a long
slender bill bending upwards, called Avosetta recurvirostra."
I am indebted to Lord Middleton for permitting me the
use of what must certainly have been Willughby 's own copy
of Wilkins's " Real Character." It is interleaved, and ten or
eleven pages, commencing with p. 122, are translated into
Latin in Ray's hand, but there are no notes by Willughby, and
this is disappointing ; also the owner's name, written on the
first page, is not his, but that of his son, Sir Thomas Willughby.
This volume is preserved with other treasures, at Wollaton
Hall in Nottinghamshire, a stately edifice built by one of the
Willughbys in the reign of Elizabeth, and here are also many
other works on Natural History which belonged to Sir Thomas
Willughby, the son of the naturalist, for they bear his name
on the fly-leaf. One of these, the " Libri de Piscibus Marinis "
of Rondeletius (1554) is furnished with a manuscript index,
incomplete and roughly written on the back of a letter, which
has been identified by Mr. W. H. Stevenson* as being in the
* Inspector to The Historical MSS. Commission, and Editor of The
Middleton Papers. (Report on MSS. 1911.)
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 211
handwriting— oblique and very scratchy — of Francis Willughby.
Besides this, there are a few other volumes, such as the works
of Gesner, Aldrovandus and Piso, and the " DelT Historia
Naturale " of Ferranti (1590), which probably belonged to
Francis Willughby, but there are no marginal notes, nor
anything to indicate ownership, and the bulk of the books
appear to have been purchased by his son. When on the
continent in 1663 — (a full account of which journey will be
given later) — Willughby is recorded to have bought a
volume of coloured pictures of birds at Nuremberg, and this
relic is still in Lord Middleton's safe keeping at Wollaton,
although in a somewhat tattered condition. Willughby, in
his zeal for information, may have got together a good
many pictures of birds and fish at one place and another,
and either he or Ray, or possibly Sir Thomas Willughby, evi-
dently pasted some of them into the same volume with the
Nuremberg collection, adding sundry engravings at the end.
These engravings are taken from Pietro Olina's " Vccelliera "
(1622), a book of which Ray subsequently made great use, and
from Adrian Collaert's " Avium vivae Icones " (circa 1580),
which is not so often quoted. No manuscript, beyond a few
names in German, accompanies the Nuremberg plates, which
represent about eighty species of birds, some well painted,
some badly. A few of them bear brief memoranda in Ray's
hand, but of little importance, e.g., where he remarks satirically
on the picture of the Sand Grouse (Pterocles alchata) that the
colours have been " corrupted " by the painter, which perhaps
partly accounts for his subsequently omitting the species
altogether from the " Ornithologia." Another painting re-
presents a hybrid duck, but although in this case the colour
has been artistically laid on, it is difficult to put a name to
the anomalous bird.
Willughby's bird skins, if he ever possessed a collection,
have passed to the mite and the moth, except a few tough
beaks of the Toucan and Albatross, and the foot and head of
an Ostrich, but the remnant of his egg collection still exists in a
cabinet at Wollaton Hall. Most of the eggs have been written
upon, and the writing is still legible, although the eggs them-
selves are very faded and mostly cracked. Some Heron's eggs
remain intact, and these and an inscribed Shoveler Duck's egg
212 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
may have been procured by Willughby or Ray in Warwickshire,
but Ave are tempted to associate a Night Heron's egg ( ?), marked
" Quacke Beige," with their visit to Sevenbuys in Holland.
1676. Willughby and Ray.
It was Francis Willughby who collected the materials for
— and John Ray, who, after his friend's early death at thirty-
seven, completed, in retirement in Warwickshire — the famous
" Ornithologia."* This great work, which won the praise of
Linnaeus and Cuvier, intended for a history of the birds of
the whole world as they were then known, will ever stand
as a monument to the industry of these two naturalists.
Nevertheless, however industrious and talented Willughby
was, considering his youth when he died, it is difficult to give
him credit for very much of it, yet but for the liberality of his
widow the world might never have had the book.
To apportion this joint production would not be easy, but
the story as told by the Rev. William Derham, who spent the
latter part of his life at Upminster, some twenty-five miles from
the home of Ray, is sufficient, since he had it from Ray's own
lips, a few months before the great naturalist died.
In connection with Ray's labours, it is curious
to peruse the correspondence which went on at this
time, which the Ray Society have so judiciously printed. -j-
There are many very remarkable letters from Martin Lister,
the author of " Historiae Animalium tres Tractatus," Sir
Philip Skippon, Jessop of Sheffield, Johnson of Brignal,
and Sir Tancred Robinson, author inter alia of a paper " On
the French Macreuse and Scotch Barnacle." Also from the
antiquary Aubrey, Sir Hans Sloane and others, all of
whom were desirous of lending a helping hand with the
" Ornithologia," on which Ray was known to be engaged.
* " Francisci Willughbeii De Middleton in agro Warwieensi, Armigeri, E
Regia Societate, Ornithologia Libri Tres." 1676. Thiswork,whichmusthave
■entailed immense labour, was probably written at Middleton Hall, near
Tanworth, where Ray took up his residence after Willughby's death in 1672,
and where he, in 1673, married Margaret Oakeley.
f " The Correspondence of John Ray " (Ray Society, 1848, p. 33).
See also " Philosophical Letters " (1718) and " Original Letters of Eminent
Literary Men " (Camden Society, 1843, pp. 194-210), as well as " Unpublished
Materia] relating to John Ray," by G. S. Boulger (The " Essex Review,"
1917, pp. 57-129).
214 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
No letter from Sir Thomas Browne is among the collection,
but in his preface Ray acknowledges the assistance of the
celebrated " Professor of Physick in the City of Norwich,"
who had communicated drawings of the Manx Shearwater,
Little Auk, Stork, Turnstone, Scoter Duck, etc. Some of
these drawings, which are life-sized, and really very creditable,
are preserved in the British Museum (Bibl. Sloane, 5266).
They are obviously the same which were made use of by
Ray for "The Ornithology" (Tables LIL, LVIIL, LIX.,
LXXVIIL), and which were also communicated to Christopher
Merrett. They have Sir T. Browne's name on them, as
well as the name of the bird, in Merrett's handwriting, in
nearly every case. There is one drawing among them
which represents a dead Ringed Plover, on which Merrett
has written : " a ringlestone or stone runner which breeds
on the shingle on by Yarmouth. S. T. B." Neither he nor
Ray refer to this name, here given on Browne's authority,
which is in allusion to the ring, or circle of stones, within
which the Dotterel lays its eggs. It is probably quite
obsolete now, but " ringle " is still in provincial use. Another
drawing, which came from Sir T. Browne or his artist, is
of a Great Crested Grebe's leg bone, showing its peculiar
formation and the " sharpe processe extending above the
thigh bone," to which Browne alludes in his catalogue. This
sketch would almost have done duty for the Diver's leg
bone which Ray figured (Tabl. LXIL). A third draught
is " the morinellus or sea doterell," that is the Turnstone,
which is mentioned in Browne's fifth letter to Merrett, where
he remarks " these sea-dotterells are often shot near the
sea [in Norfolk]." Browne adds, what is very true, that
his artist should have painted " a greater eye [or shade] of
dark red in the feathers of wing and back," but with this
exception the painting is passable. In the same letter to
Merrett, Browne speaks of sending a picture of his "whin-
bird." This, which is rather rough, is also in the Sloane
Collection, but it is quite good enough to prove that the
" whin-bird " was a Goldcrest, not a species which frequents
furze.
Other pictures of birds were communicated to Ray by
Sir Philip Skippon, whose residence was at Blythburgh in
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 215
the north of Suffolk, but it is not likely that they were so
important as Browne's. Among these letters there is not
any communication, as might have been expected, from
Christopher Merrett, of whom, it seems, Ray had not a very
high opinion.
1658-1664. John Ray.
The Early Itineraries of John Ray. First Itinerary,
August and September, 1658.— Perhaps nothing better shows
the enquiring spirit with which Ray and a few friends of
like tastes set to work, than the diaries of certain " simpling
journeys," as he called them, undertaken in quest of herbs,
when he and WiUughby were young men, but Ray was seven
years the senior. The first of these simpling expeditions
was in 1658, at which time Ray (or as he then spelled his
name, Wray) was only thirty years of age. Yet, young as he
was, he had already made his mark at Cambridge, where he
had been elected Greek and Mathematical Lecturer to Trinity
College. Full of enthusiasm for botany, but at present
taking not much thought of birds, and solitary, for on this
occasion he had no companion with him, the scholar starts
from Cambridge on August 9th, 1658, on horseback, riding
thirty-one miles the first day. Among enquiring minds of the
stamp of Ray's, it is plain that Botany claimed far more
attention than Ornithology in the seventeenth century; by
physicians and laymen alike the medicinal value of herbs' was
held in high repute, and it was still thought that in many
a familiar shrub some undiscovered secret might lie. This
summer expedition took Ray to Northampton, Warwick,
Coventry, Ashby and Buxton, as far north as Lancashire,
after which he visited Wales, and returned home by Gloucester.
The Itinerary contains nothing about birds, and on his return
he devoted his time to the " Catalogus Plantarum circa
Cantabrigiam," which proved to be his first step to fame.
Rays Second Itinerary. July and August, 1661. — The
journal of Ray's second Itinerary, commencing on July 26th,
is longer, and has a good deal in it which appeals to lovers
of birds. ' ' We began our journey northwards from Cambridge,
and that day passing through Huntingdon and Stilton, we
rode as far as Peterborough, twenty-five miles. . . . August
216 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
the 8th, we arrived at Scarborough, distant from Malton
sixteen miles. This town hath a great trade of fish taken
thereabout. We saw ling, cod fish, skate, thornback, turbot,
whiting and herring. They take also conger, bret [brill] and
mackrell. . . . August the 9th, from Scarborough we journeyed
to Whitby, twelve miles. . . . The country peojjle hereabout
told us the story related by Camden, that wild geese, if once
they light in Whitby strand, cannot rise again or fly away. . ."
This venerable legend, which claims such high antiquity,
runs in the Cottonian MSS. thus: " Not farre from Whitby
is a peice of grounde called Whitby stronde, over which
the inhabitants affyrme that noe wildgoose can flye, . . ."
William Camden, the historian, does not mention a strand,
but locates the dangerous spot " over certain neighbouring
fields hereabouts." Very likely, as in the case of other legends,
it had a foundation in incidents now long since forgotten.
After passing within sight of Holy Island, " but the tide
served us not to pass over," and the Fame islands, the
travellers lodged at Berwick, that is John Ray and Philip
Skippon, for Scott's statement * that Willughby was one of
the company must be erroneous.")"
About birds there is nothing more until they crossed
the Scottish border and came to the Bass Rock, of the
celebrity of which Ray was doubtless well aware. He thus
refers to what has always been the most eastern station of
the Soland-Goose.J " August 17th [1661], we travelled to
Dunbar. . . . August the 19th we went to Leith, keeping all
along on the side of the Fryth. By the way we viewed
Tontallon Castle, and passed over to the Basse Island, where
we saw, on the rocks, innumerable of the soland geese. The
old ones are all over white, excepting the pinion or hard
feathers of their wings which are black. The upper part
of the head and neck, in those that are old is of a yellowish
dun colour ; they lay but one egg apiece, which is white and
not very large. They are very bold, and sit in great multi-
* ";Select Remains of The Learned John Ray," p. 132, by George Scott
(1760).
f As pointed out by Professor G. S. Boulger. See " Correspondence of
John Ray,", p. 3 (published by The Ray Society).
t " Select Remains," p. 191.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 217
tudes till one comes close up to them, because they are not
wont to be scared or disturbed. The young ones are esteemed
a choice dish in Scotland, and sold very dear (Is. 8d. plucked).
We eat of them at Dunbar. They are in bigness little inferior
to an ordinary goose. The young one is upon the back black,
and speckled with little white spots, under the breast and
the belly gray. The beak is sharp-pointed, the mouth very
wide and large, the tongue very small, the eyes great, the
foot hath four toes webbed together. It feeds upon mackerel
and herring, and the flesh of the young one smells and tastes
strong of these fish. ..." Besides this narrative, of which
the whole is not here quoted, we have a very excellent account
of the Solan Goose in " The Ornithology," to be found in
the Latin edition at pages 247, 265, and in the English edition
at pp. 328 and 348. Here, as well as in Ray's earlier " Cata-
logue of English Birds " in 1674* it is spelled Soland Goose,
which is the Lowland Scotch way of writing it.f
This journey ended on September 7th, on which day
they returned to Cambridge, and the week after Ray writes
to Willughby an account of the plants he had observed,^
but says nothing of birds.
Ray's Third, Itinerary. May, June, July, 1662. — On May
8th, 1662, Ray and Willughby, starting from Cambridge,
evidently on horseback, saw the sheep fair at St. Neots, and
passed on thence to Northampton and Rugby. On the 12th
and, 13th they noted sundry plants, and on the 14th, continues
the diary, " We diverted out of our Way to see the Puits, which
we judged to be a sort of Lari, in a Meere at Norbury belonging
to Col. Skrimshaw. They build altogether in an islet in the
middle of a pool. Each hen layeth three or four eggs of a
dirty blue or sea-green, spotted with black ; at the driving
every year, they take commonly above an hundred dozen
young, which they sell at five shillings the dozen. "§
This settlement is also described in " The Ornithology "
(p. 347), and afterwards at greater length, in Robert Plot's
"Natural History of Staffordshire" (1686), with a curious
* Printed with " A collection of English Words," 1674 (pp. 81-1)6).
j Sixteen variants of Solan are cited in " The Gannet, " p. 20.
t " The Correspondence of John Ray," p. 3.
§ "Select Remains," p. 210.
218 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
picture of the driving of the young ones, reproduced in " British
Birds," and which by Mr. Mullens's permission c c an be given
again. It must have had a good population of Puits, a
thousand at least, but after the Gulls had shifted their quarters
once or twice it apparently became extinct. *
After stopping at Chester, they proceeded towards Anglesey
— where Ray had been in 1658 — intending to visit Priestholm,
or Puffin Island, from Bangor. Of Priestholm, a good nursery,
afterwards described by Thomas Pennant,")" Ray observes :
" In the island (Prestholm) are bred several sorts of birds, two
sorts of sea-gulls, cormorants, puffins, so called there, which I
take to be Anas arctica clusij, razor-bills, and guillems,
scrays [Terns] two sorts, which are a kind of gull. "J The
Great Orme's Head not being in their programme, although
Rock-birds might have been seen there in plenty, they
next passed on to Bardsey Island, tying at the south-
west point of Caernarvon, where there " build the Prestholm
puffin, sea-pies, and some other birds . . ." It was here,
I make no doubt, that Ray learnt the legend of the Puffin's
inability to fly over the land — a fable long believed of
the Solan Goose also — as well as another story about a
torpid Puffin, which fisherman's myth he relates in " The
Ornithology. '§
From Bardsey their route was to Pwllheli [Pulhely], and
by the way they saw the Lesser Black-backed Gull, and more
Terns. On June 2nd, says the journal, they " rode to Aberdovy,
seventeen miles, over marsh-land and sand"; it was here,
according to " The Ornithology, "|| that the Turnstone was
identified — a late date for this species. On the sandy meadows
near Aberavon, ever on the look out for fresh plants, they
* In 1794 they were breeding on some pools at Batchacre, one mile from
Shebden pool, and about the same distance from Norbury (" The History and
Antiquities of Staffordshire," by Stebbing Shaw, Vol. I, p. 96).
Plot's sketch shows the process of driving the young Gulls, able to
ewim but not to fly, towards a net, a manoeuvre which was done by men
with long poles wading in the water. At the present day where gulleries
-exist, it is the eggs which are eaten.
f Who was there in 1773 ("A Tour in Wales," Vol. II, p. 200).
% " Select Remains," p. 226.
§ P. 326. At the present time it is affirmed that Puffins no longer breed
at Bardsey, see an excellent account of the birds of that island in the
" Zoologist " for 1902, p. 11.
II " Select Remains," p. 236.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 219
gathered Cineraria palustris, but were in some doubt as to the
identity of a mysterious bird, which was only the Common
Redshank. Tims following the line of the Welsh coast, the
JOHN BAY.
two naturalists wended their way to St. David's Head, where
one can suppose they viewed with longing eyes the wild
aspect of Ramsey Island, but it is not stated that they
crossed over. They, however, were not prevented from landing
220 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
upon Caldey island, where they found eggs in abundance of
Terns and " puits."* By June 26th the travellers, still stop-
ping to collect flowers as they rode along, had left Wales
and were in Cornwall, where the following day an entry in the
journal runs : " Friday, June 27th, [1662], we passed on towards
Padstow . . . Near Padstow we saw great flocks of Cornish
choughs. The gannets, they told us, were almost of the bigness
of a goose, white, the tips only of their wings black ; they
have a strange way of catching them, by tying a pilchard to
a board, and fastening it so that the bird may see it, who
comes down with so great swiftness for his prey that he breaks
his neck against the board. . . . Monday, June 30th, we rode
over the sands to St. Ives . . . We passed over to Godreve
Island, which is nothing but a rock, about one league distant
from St. Ives, to the north-east near the land, upon which in
time of year build great store of birds, viz. gulls, cormorants,
razorbills, guillems and puffins. The razorbills are not so
numerous on this island as the guillems, or kiddaws, of which
many scores of young ones lie dead here. Here they call the
puffins, popes ; and the guillems kiddaws. We saw many of those
birds which they call gannets, flying about on the water. This
bird hath long wings, and a long neck, and flyeth strongly.
Possibly it may be the Catarractes. He preys upon pilchards,
the shoals whereof great multitudes of these fowls constantly
pursue. Another bird they told us of here called wagell,
which pursues and strikes at the small gull so long, till out of
fear it mutes, and what it voids the wagell follows and greedily
devours, catching it sometimes before it has fallen down to
the water. This several seamen affirmed themselves to have
oftentimes seen."j-
It is curious that Ray never seems to have realised that
the Solan Goose and the Cornish Gannet were one and the same.
In "The Ornithology" (p. 349) he says: "We saw many of
these Gannets flying, but could not kill one." Had they done
so their identity would have been discovered. This being,
* This is not without interest, because the Black-headed Gull, or puit,
in modern times was not known to Murray Mathew as breeding at Caldey, or
on any of the Pembrokeshire islands ("Birds of Pembrokeshire," 1894, p. 95).
f " Select E,emains," pp. 268, 273, 275. What Ray was told of the
Wagell better fits the habits of the Arctic Skua than any species of Gull.
See Newton's " Dictionary of Birds," p. 1017.
[Face p. 221.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 221
perhaps, the fullest of the Itineraries, it may not be amiss to
indicate, on a map, the actual course taken.
Ray and Willughby's Journey through Europe in 1663-4.
— Instead of following Ray in his fourth and fifth Itineraries
(when, searching for new plants and birds, he visited Cornwall
with Willughby in 1667, and after that again turned his
face northwards in 1671 to Northumberland in the company
of Willisel, a botanist) it will be pleasant and more profitable
to accompany him abroad. Having, after due deliberation,
conceived the bold idea of attempting a systematic description
of the whole animal kingdom, the two naturalists, Ray
and Willughby (of whom one at least was already a master
in science), crossed to Calais on April 18th, 1663, bent on
exploring western Europe. They had with them Nathaniel
Bacon, afterwards a lawyer of distinction, and Philip Skippon,
heir to a Suffolk knighthood, but at present Ray's pupil.
The intention of the party Avas to visit Holland, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy and France, which they did; but war
breaking out they had to hurry back from France on the
return journey, escaping at short notice with the loss of
valuable journals. Ray's account of the expedition is to be
found in his "Travels Through the Low-Countries, Germany,
Italy and France," a book somewhat disappointing to the
zoologist.*
Striking northwards from Calais, by way of Dunkirk
and Ostend, they proceeded to Holland, and visited Delft,
of more importance then than it is now. Here one Jean
vander Mere kept a museum, where, among other " natural
rarities," was a Soland Goose, said — most likely in error —
to have come from Greenland.
From Delftf their route took them to Leyden in a canal
boat drawn by horses, where they noted the grave of Carolus
Clusius (L'Escluse) the famous botanist. From Leyden about
the 1st of June, a by-journey in the direction of Rotterdam
finds them at a village called Sevenhuys,J for the purpose of
seeing a grand congregation of Spoonbills, Night Herons,
* First edition, 1673; second edn., 1738.
f " Travels," p. 24.
X Zevenhuizen, see a map illustrating the past distribution of the
Spoonbill ("Norwich Naturalists' Trans.," Vol. V., p. 166),
222 EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
Grey Herons and Cormorants, all of which were breeding in
a large wood. Ray's delight must have been great, and his
astonishment also at seeing Cormorants, " a whole-footed
bird " as he remarks, building upon trees. Perhaps he did
not then remember the experience of a certain Englishman,
to wit Dean Turner, of their nests in Norfolk. " When the
young are ripe," he says, " they who farm the grove, with an
iron hook fastened to the end of a long pole, lay hold on the
bough on which the nest is built and shake the young ones
out, and sometimes nest and all down to the ground." From
this composite settlement of birds, the young of the Spoonbill
and Night Heron afforded materials for the descriptions to
be used afterwards in " The Ornithology." * Besides the
four kinds of water-birds in this prolific grove, which was
rented as high as three thousand guilders — over £200 —
merely for the birds and the grass, there were Ravens, Wood-
Pigeons and Turtle Doves. From Leyden, Ray and his
companions moved to Haarlem, and from Haarlem to
Amsterdam, but as there is little in his book of Travels,
here or elsewhere about birds, it will be better and simpler
in following their route to rely on the pages of " The Orni-
thology."
About Collen (Cologne), where the travellers arrived on
June 30th, 1663, they discovered the Hoopoe to be very
frequent. " It sits for the most part on the ground, sometimes
on Willows " ; from the stomach of one dissected they took
beetles. Here, as usual, Ray enumerates the principal plants
which he found growing by the way, a knowledge of which
such good use was to be made afterwards.
At Frankfort, July 14th, they ascertained the Hawfinch
to be common, and one of the party shot a Golden Oriole,
many of which they afterwards saw at Naples, and noted that
it was a bird of passage. Here also they first saw the Black
Stork. f One of the most important cities which comes
* See pages 279, 2SS, 329 of Willughby's " Ornithology." Mr. J. P.
Thysse states that the last eggs of the ISight Heron, which has now vanished
as a breeder from Holland, were taken at Lekkerbeelc in 1870. Dutch
breeding settlements of the Spoonbill are also reduced to two ; the wood in
which they nested at Sevenhuys, according to Pennant (" Brit. Zool.," app.)
wa3 destroyed some time prior to 1768.
f "The Ornithology," pp. 199, 245, 286.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 223
into Ray's Itinerary is Strasburg, visited by the four friends
on July 23rd, 1663, on which occasion our author mentions
the Whimbrel, and the Black Stork again, adding : " We suppose
those we saw were young ones, for that their bills and legs
were green." * But what was much more to the purpose,.
Willughby was able to buy a volume at Strasburg contain-
ing excellently coloured " Pictures of all the Water-foul
frequenting the Rhine near that City, as also all the Fish and
Water-Insects found there." This welcome prize was " pur-
chased of one Leonard Baltner, a Fisherman. "f
It was in Germany that Ray and Willughby first met
with the Roller, and one can imagine their pleasure at such a
beautiful bird, while in the market at Ratisbone, in Bavaria,
they were fortunate in picking up a Great Black Woodpecker.
This was in September, on the 15th of which month our
travellers arrived at Vienna, where nothing is said about the
market, but at the live-bird shops they came across a few
novelties. J
The Nutcracker, illustrated in a plate in " The Orni-
thology "§ from a dried skin, which they very likely had sent
home or brought with them, was met with near this city.
We can fancy Willughby's excitement when its harsh call-
note was encountered, apparently on September 26th, " in
the mountainous part of Austria, near the way leading
from Vienna to Venice, not far from a great village
called Schadwyen, where there is a very steep, difficult and
craggy ascent " This is precise enough, and it would
be interesting to know if Nutcrackers are still there. In
Switzerland, the travellers had leisure to search for many
plants, and among birds they were successful, too — the Dipper,
Ptarmigan, and Common Sandpiper being added to their
growing list. The last-named was noticed in the month
of April on the margin of the Lake of Geneva, || where its
piping note and flirting tail are still to be heard and seen.
* " The Ornithology," pp. 2S0, 295.
f Ray's Preface to " The Ornithology." A description of it has been
already given, p. 197.
% Such as the Citril, Serin and Crested Lark, see " The Ornithology,"
p. 265.
§ "The Ornithology," p. 133, pi. XX; and "Travels," p. 120.
|| "The Ornithology," pp. 149, 176, 302.
224 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Following their road, as it is laid down with much exact-
ness in the " Travels," we see that by the 1st of October, 1663,
the four friends had reached the city of Venice. Now we have
to depend on the pages of " The Ornithology," from which
it appears that they saw several good birds at Venice, viz.,
Ruffs, Avocets and Water-Rails, besides a Little Egret and
a Sea Eagle, and Brambling Finches in profusion.* The
Goldeneye Duck was very abundant, although so early in the
year, most likely in the market, a resort Willughby would have
been sure not to miss. Ray notices its applicable provincial
name of Quattro-occhi,^ the Tufted Duck being called by the
natives a Capo negro. At one of the palaces they were
shown a living Vulture, possibly the palace of Foscari
all' Arena, where Evelyn, the diarist, had seen sundry live
birds in 1645. %
Both at Venice and at Padua they saw many Capercaillie,
which had been brought from the Alps, where they are still
to be found ; while at Modena a Great Bustard was hanging
for sale in the market, perhaps a migrant, as the date was
February 22nd, 1664,§ when snow might have driven it from
more eastern quarters.
When they got to Rome they very quickly took notice
of Little Owls, standing on their perches, offered for use as
decoys, a practice of very old standing. Ray alludes to this
form of sport in " The Ornithology," referring to Olina's
" Vccelliera," a work of much repute, printed in 1622, where
there is a quaint illustration of the mode in which it is carried
on. || At Rome there were also many great Cranes exposed
for sale " in the Winter time, which I suppose had been shot
on the Sea-coast."
* "The Ornithology," pp. 62, 254, 280, 315, 322.
f " The Ornithology," p. 368: it is still in uso, cf. "Fauna d'ltalia."
II, p. 2C7.
\ " Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn," Vol. I, p. 212.
§ "The Ornithology," pp. 173, 179.
|| See Olina (p. 64) for a clever plate, and a pretty full description " del
rnodo d'vecellare con la Ciuetta." The birdeatchers of Italy still repeat
the process, just as their forefathers used to do it hundreds of years ago.
It is extraordinary what a fascination these Little Owls exercise on birds,
especially the smallest sorts, which soon fall victims to the well limed rods
artfully set to catch them.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 225
At Rome our travellers found a kindred spirit in the
son of Sir Thomas Browne, of Norwich,* who refers in two of
his letters to their meeting, remarking that : " Mr. Wray
is here at Rome: hee hath been in Sicilia and Malta";
and again, writing to his father: "Mr. Wray hath made
a collection of plants, fisshes, foules, stones, and other
rarities, which hee hath with him ; and Mr. Skippon, besides
a great number which hee hath sent home, though they had
the ill fortune to loos one -venture with a servant of thers,
who is now slane in Tunes."
About French birds there is not very much anywhere in
" The Ornithology " -. no opportunity was given them for
observations of this nature, yet at Montpellier several dried
" cases " of the Flamingo, " which is often taken about
Martiguez," came under notice. At Montpellier, Willughby
(now aged twenty-seven) parted from his three companions,
and proceeded to Spain, where he kept a rather brief journal
of notes, which contains one reference to Red-legged Part-
ridges. A letter which he wrote to Ray from Paris on his
way home^ is still to be seen at the Natural History Museum.
Ray and Skippon remained at Montpellier until December,
and then returned by way of Lyons and Paris to England,
but unfortunately lost a portion, if not all, the notes taken
in Germany.
Browne's Works " edited by Wilkin, Vol. I., pp. 77, 87.
Chapter XIV.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1753. Erich Pontoppidan (Bishop or Bergen).
Bishop Pontoppidan, a Danish prelate, born in 1698,
claims a distinguished position as the author of a Natural
History of Norway, best known in England by the translation
" THE GANNET."
published in 1755. In this fine old work, twenty-two folio
pages are devoted to a really very good description of the
birds of Norway, with figures which are easily recognisable
of twelve of them.*
There is a rather full account of the Gannet, " The
Hav-Sule \i.e., Sea-Sule, or Solan] a large sea-bird, which
somewhat resembles a Goose," accompanied by a somewhat
imaginative figure, with a comb on its head, which cannot be
due to a defect in the block, as it is stated in the text to be red.
* "The Natural History of Norway, in Two Parts, translated from the
Danish Original," Vol. II,. chap. iii. and iv.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 227
1758-59. Carolxjs Linnaeus.
Karl Linne, better known to science by his Latin
designation of Carolus Linnaeus, the reformer of Latin names
in Natural History, has ever been justly renowned for his
attainments. His " Sy sterna Naturae " was commenced and
finished while its author was still quite a young man, the
first edition being offered to the Swedish public in 1735.
Born two years after the death of John Ray, whose studies
and Itineraries were the subject of the last chapter (supra,
p. 215), the early work of Linnaeus is held to have been largely
shaped by the influence of his English predecessor. Professor
Newton, with somewhat qualified praise, observes that " In
his classification of Birds " Linnaeus " for the most part
followed Ray, and where he departed from his model, he
seldom improved upon it."* The Solan Goose is concisely
described by Linnaeus in the 10th, 12th and 13th editions
of the " Systema Naturae," which were published respec-
tively in 1758, 1766 and 1788, and it is there accorded a
position in the genus Pelecantis, under the designation of
P. bassanus. In the 12th edition we are told that it is
found " Insula Scotiae Basse," as if Linnaeus was not sure
of any other breeding place, and the appellations of
" Gentleman" and " Jaen von Gent" are given as provincial
synonyms.
The epithet of gentleman, a colloquial expansion of the
name gent or gant, as applied to the Solan Goose, is of respect-
able antiquity, for it is said by Lucas Debes,f from whom no
doubt Linnaeus, and also Pontoppidan, copied it, to have
been used by fishermen as far back as the seventeenth
century. In this connection it is instructive to go further
and search for the origin of the Dutch and Flemish name of
Jan-van-Gent, another appellation of long standing, and
which is not obsolete yet. De Jan van Gent (" Vogels van
Nederland," 1854-8, p. 571) is first met with in two works
almost forgotten now, a " Voyage into Spitzbergen and Green-
land " by Frederick Martin (1675),$ and Mohr's " Forsog
* "Dictionary of Birds," Introd., p. 8.
j In his "Faeroa?. and Fseroa Referata" (16731.
| English edition, 1094.
228 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
til en Islandsk Naturhistorie " (1786), in both of which it
is cited. It is easy to understand how Gem, Jan or John
would be selected as a common Christian name by seafaring
men, who are never slow in applying a nick-name ; indeed
there are several such instances in Ornithology.*
1726-98. Thomas Pennant.
By far the best authority to consult about birds in the
eighteenth century, so far as Great Britain is concerned,
although it has been the fashion to underrate him, is Thomas
Pennant. A man of great natural ability, he did more to
advance zoology in this country from a scientific point of
view than anyone else, while to Gilbert White of Selborne
is due the great merit of popularising it. Gilbert White's
correspondence we fortunately have, and very pleasant and
instructive reading the public have always found it to be,
but the numerous letters which Pennant must have written
in reply to the parson of Hampshire are lost, a circumstance
greatly to be regretted, f
No student of this period can go wrong in turning to
Pennant's " British Zoology," his chief, as it was his earliest,
literary effort. It was begun, the author tells us, in 1761,
possibly at the solicitation of the great Linnppus, with whom
he had been in correspondence, and by whom he had been
elected to the Royal Society of Upsal in 1757, an event which
he regarded as the greatest honour of his life. J
Pennant's careful pages will always repay perusal, if
read in the light of what is now known about British birds.
A useful comparison may also be drawn between the list of
British birds which he has given in an appendix, § and a
similar list drawn up by John Ray at the end of the seven-
teenth century. ||
* Guillemot is said to be derived from the French Guillaume, and
"Willock," an appellation for the same bird, from William.
f At a meeting of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, held in
February, 1914, Mr. 0. H. Wild exhibited a copy of Pennant's "British
Zoology," bearing the following inscription in the first volume : " Gil. White,
May 4, 1768. The gift of the author." An interesting relic of their former
friendship.
J " Literary Life of the late Thomas Pennant," p. 2.
§ " British Zoology," vol. II., pp. 731-749.
|| " Ornithologist Libri Tres." (1676), p. 17.
EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 229
Altogether Ray reckoned 164 British birds, and Pennant
242, while another well-known naturalist, John Latham, a
few years later (1787), puts the total at 268,* which gives
an advance of 104 species in about 113 years. In the first
half of the eighteenth century progress was slow, only the
Golden Oriole, and the Rose-coloured Starling, seem to have
been added, but between 1751 and 1796 there was a great
stride forwards, sixteen more species being registered as
British, thanks to the exertions of Pennant and his personal
friends. These species were : —
The Little Bustard in 1751
The Nutcracker in 1753 fide Pennant
The Grey Phalarope in 1757 fide Edwardsf
The Red-necked Phalarope in 1769
The Little Bittern in 1773
The Dartford Warbler in 1773 fide Latham
The Spoonbill in 1774 fide Sparshall
The Squacco Heron in 1775 fide Latham
The Ruddy Sheld-Duck in 1776 fide Tunstall
The Red-breasted Goose in 1776 fide Tunstall
The Ortolan Bunting in 1776
The Night Heron in 1782
The Cream-coloured Courser in 1785 fide Latham
The Little Crake in 1791 fide Markwick
The Bee-eater in 1793 fide Sir J. E. Smith
The Sclavonian Grebe in 1796 fide Montagu
Of the above-named birds four at least are now looked
upon as annual visitants, while one, the Dartford Warbler,
is a regular breeder in the south of England, in small numbers.
Pennant was a Welshman, born and bred in Flintshire,
and it was by a Welsh Literary Society that the " British
Zoology" was published. $ His attention therefore was
* " General Synopsis of Birds," by John Latham. First supplement,
p. 281.
f Well figured by George Edwards in " The Philosophical Transactions "
for 1757 (vol. I., Tab. VI.) as well as in that author's "Gleanings of Natural
History " (1760) vol. VI., pi. 308).
I In folio in 1766. Reprinted in octavo in 1768 and 1770, see " Biblio-
graphy of British Ornithology," p. 464, and " British Birds " Mag., vol. II.,
p. 259. Fifteen years after Pennant's death, a fifth edition was called for,
which contains sundry additions by the Rev. John Lightfoot, author of a
" Flora Scotica," but they are of little value.
230 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
naturally directed to the western side of England, but he
early became aware that on the east coast there lay a greater
scope for the naturalist. Of Pennant's numerous works
none appeals to the naturalist more than his Scotch " Tour,"
published in 1771,* which is principally about North Britain,
but he stopped a while to explore the still imperfectly drained
fens of Lincolnshire on his way.f Thus seeking as he went
for birds and antiquities, he visited Crowland, Swinehead and
Spalding, and thence made his way to Lincoln. This was
in June 1769, but the country was not new to him, for Pen-
nant had already seen something of Lincolnshire in 1768.
Lincolnshire was a land unique in its way, a land which had
been styled by Thomas Fuller the Aviary of England, nor
was that title misapplied, for we can well believe that the
southern portion was still teeming with water-birds, in spite
of the prodigious efforts of Vermuyden to drain it.
In this oasis of plenty, the Ruff was common enough
for one fowler to have netted seventy-two in a morning.
That was exceptional, but in an ordinary season, that is to
say between April and Michaelmas, a single man would take
forty or fifty dozen, which after being fattened on bread and
milk and hempseed, were worth two shillings or half a crown
apiece. % §
The wealth of the fenmen were the huge numbers of tame
Geese, which were bred for the sake of their feathers. The
unfortunate birds were made to undergo the cruel operation
of plucking five times a year, the first time at Lady-day, for
their feathers and quills, and after that for the feathers only.
A single person would keep a thousand Geese, each of which
would rear about seven young ones, so that towards the end
of the breeding season he would become master of eight
thousand. || A gozzard (i.e., goose-herd) attended the flock,
and twice a day drove the whole of them to water, which
* " A Tour in Scotland, and a Voyage to The Hebrides," 1771. The fifth
edition published in 1790 contains several additions,
f Idem, pp. 9-12.
{ " British Zoology," II., p. 460.
§ Pennant's Gambet "shot on the coast of Lincolnshire " appears from the
plate in the "British Zoology " (vol. II., pi. LXX.) to have been a Reeve.
II " British Zoology," II., p. 571.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 231
kept them in health and exercise. When ready for the market,
these Geese, except such as might be retained for further
plucking, were driven to London, to supply the poulterers,
especially from some of the fens near Revesby. Revesby was
where Sir Joseph Banks had a country seat, at which Pennant,
who had known Banks for some three years, was a welcome
guest, and here he tells us he made " many observations on
the zoology of the country."*
Although Pennant has so much to say about tame Geese,
very little is told about wild ones in the " Tour," but in the
" British Zoology " under the head of Grey-lag Goose, he is
rather more explicit. " This species," we are informed,
" resides in the fens the whole year, breeds there, and hatches
about eight or nine young, which are often taken, easily made
tame, and esteemed most excellent meat."")"
It was from this stock that the greater part of England's
domestic geese had sprung. But that the Grey-lag was the
only wild Goose which formerly bredin Lincolnshire, Cambridge-
shire and Norfolk, as has been asserted, is more difficult
of proof. Of the Bean Goose, and under that name he,
no doubt, included the Pink-footed Goose, Pennant remarks
that they arrive in Lincolnshire in autumn, " they always
light on cornfields, and feed much on the green wheat. They
never breed in the fens, but all disappear in May. "J This
seems a plain statement about their habits, which he regarded
as opposed to those of the Grey-lag: The west side of the
fens was evidently the most accessible, and that is first de-
scribed by the naturalist in the narrative now to be quoted.
Pennant, who it must be remembered was writing for
the general public and not for that little band of naturalists
who were his personal friends, does not give us by any means
all the ornithological details one now longs for ; nevertheless,
we must be grateful. He says : —
"The fen called the West Fen is the place where the
Ruffs and Reeves resort to in the greatest numbers ; and
many other sorts of water fowl, which do not require the
* See " Literary Life," p. 8. A good picture of the house is given in
Howlett's " Views in Lincoln " (1805).
f " British Zoology," II. , p. 570.
+ " British Zoology," II., p. 575.
232 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
shelter of reeds or rushes, migrate here to breed ; for this
fen is very bare, having been imperfectly drained by narrow
canals It is observable, that once in seven or
eight years, immense shoals of Sticklebacks appear in the
Welland below Spalding, and attempt coming up the river in
form of a vast column. They are supposed to be the collected
multitudes washed out of the fens by the floods of several
years Stares [Starlings] which during winter
resort in myriads to roost in the reeds, are very destructive,
by breaking them down, by the vast numbers that perch on
them. The people are therefore very dihgent in their attempts
to drive them away, and are at great expense in powder to
free themselves of these troublesome guests. I have seen a
stock of reeds harvested and stacked worth two or three
hundred pounds, which was the property of a single farmer."
With regard to these Starlings it is easy to believe that the
reed owners found them an intolerable nuisance. According
to Daniel a reed-bed has been known to be damaged to the
tune of a hundred pounds in one night,* this apparently in
Lincolnshire. It was not only that the Starlings bent the
stems, and even snapped some of them, in either case prevent-
ing their attaining full development, but by their abundant
excrement the reeds became soiled, and consequently less
saleable. As we have seen the value of a crop, when thatching
was universal, and tiles not much used might be very great,
and the damage a matter of no small consequence.
William Richards, who in his " History of [King's] Lynn,"
has a good deal to say about the fens, with which he was
doubtless personally acquainted, refers particularly to the
Starling's, I and the havoc sometimes made in their ranks
by the long guns of the fen fowlers, J who greatly resented
their depredations.
Pennant continues : " The birds which inhabit the
different fens are very numerous ; I never met with a finer
* " Rural Sports," by the Rev. W. B. Daniel, vol. III., p. 199.
f See. X. and pp. 78, 195, 199 (published 1812).
I These men loaded with ample supply of shot, and he relates how a
certain Thomas Hall knocked over 432 Starlings at a single discharge. But
this tale of slaughter was beaten by Colonel Hawker (" Instructions to Young
Sportsmen," p. 271), and also by a heavy shot at Whittlesea Mere, which
accounted for 504 (" On. Miscellany," III., p. 219).
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 233
field for fhe zoologist to range in. Besides the common Wild-
duok, of which an account is given in another place,* wild
Geese, Garganies, Pochards, Shovelers, and Teals breed here.
I have seen in the East Fen a small flock of the tufted Ducks ;
but they seemed to make it only a baiting place. The Pewit
Gulls and black Terns abound ; the last in vast flocks almost
deafen one with their clamours. A few of the great Terns or
Tickets [? Pickets] are seen among them. I saw several of
the great crested Grebes on the East Fen, called there Gauntsrf
and met with one of their floating nests with eggs in it. The
lesser crested Grebe [same as the preceding], the black and
dusky Grebe [Black-necked Grebe in summer and winter
plumage] and the little Grebe, are also inhabitants of the
fens, together with Coots, % Water-hens, spotted Water-hens,
Water-rails, Ruffs, Redshanks, Lapwings or Wipes, Red-breasted
Godwits and Whimbrels.§ The Godwits breed near Washen-
brough|| [and when fattened sell for half a crown or five shillings
apiece, B.Z., II., p. 439] ; the Whimbrels only appear for about
a fortnight in May near Spalding, and then quit the country.
Opposite to FossdyJce Wash during summer are vast numbers
of Avosettas, called there Yelpers from their cry. They
hover over the sportsman's head like the Lapwing and fly
with their necks and legs extended. Knots are taken in
nets along the shores near Fossdyke in great numbers during
winter ; but they disappear in the spring."
Pennant had not at that time discovered that his Red
Knot was only the summer plumage of the Grey Knot as well
as of his Flintshire Ash-coloured Sandpipers. It is, however,
correct enough to say that these birds go away in May : their
variable plumage continued to puzzle ornithologists. The
following particulars about the Knot are given in " British
Zoology " : " These birds, when fattened, are preferred by
some to the Ruffs themselves. They are taken in great numbers
on the coasts of Lincolnshire in nets such as employed in
taking Ruffs ; with two or three dozens of stales of wood
* This reference is to the " British Zoology," II., p. 594.
f Seen on June 27th, 1769, B.Z.
% A white coot seen at Spalding, B.Z., II., p. 495.
§ Called Curlew-Knot at Spalding, B.Z., II., p. 430.
[! On the Witham, near Lincoln.
234 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
painted like the birds placed within : fourteen dozens have
been taken at once. Their season is from the beginning of
August to that of November. They disappear with the first
frosts."
To go on with the narrative. " The shorfc-eared Owl,"
continues Pennant, " visits the neighbourhood of Washen-
brough along with the Woodcocks, and probably performs its
migration with those birds, for it is observed to quit the
country at the same time : I have also received specimens of
them from the Danish dominions, one of the retreats of the
Woodcock. This Owl is not observed in this country to perch
on trees, but conceals itself in long old grass ; if disturbed,
takes a short flight, lights again, and keeps staring about,
during which time its horns are very visible. The farmers
are found of the arrival of these birds, as they clear the fields
of mice, and will even fly in search of prey during day, provided
the weather is cloudy and misty. But the greatest
curiosity in these parts is the vast Heronry at Cressi Hall,
six miles from Spalding. The Herons resort there in February
to repair their nests, settle there in the spring to breed, and
quit the place during winter. They are numerous as Rooks,
and their nests so crowded together, that myself, and the
company that was with me, counted not less than eighty in
one spreading oak. I here had opportunity of detecting my
own mistake, and that of other ornithologists, in making two
species of Herons ; for I found that the Crested Heron was
only the male of the other : it made a most beautiful appear-
ance with its snowy neck and long crest streaming with the
wind. The family who owned this place was of the same
name with these birds, which seems to be the principal induce-
ment for preserving them. In the time of Michael Drayton,
Here stalked the stately crane,
As though he march/ d in war.
But at present this bird is quite unknown in our island . . ."
This testimony about the Crane is repeated in the
" British Zoology," and has been already quoted {supra, p. 168).
Nevertheless, some Cranes must have still existed in Lincoln-
shire, if we are to credit John Hill, who, writing in 1752, affirms
that he had seen large flocks of them in that county, yet it
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY? 235
must be admitted that Dr. Hill was not a very trustworthy
observer.*
The Cressi heronry, which Pennant saw, and which is
also alluded to in the "British Zoology, "t must have been
an exceptionally fine one. Pennant did not fail to transmit
some account of it to Gilbert White, but that is lost, although
we have White's characteristic reply. :f It was situated near
the town of Gosberton, not far from Sir Joseph Banks's Abbey
at Revesby, where Pennant, on his first visit to Lincolnshire
in May, 1768, had been fortunate enough to shoot the Sedge
Warbler. §
On less competent authority so many as eighty nests on
one oak tree would hardly have been accepted as credible,
nor has Pennant's counting met with a modern parallel in
England. Lincolnshire heronries appear to have been larger
than at the present day, but it is hardly likely that the birds
themselves were more numerous. Pishey Thompson, a local
historian, writes of a very large tree at Leake, in the same
neighbourhood, which was literally covered with Herons'
nests, || but he does not tell us how many, or whether anybody
counted them.
* " History of Animals," by John Hill, forming Vol. III. of a general
Natural History.
| II., p. 422.
| Letters to Pennant, XXII., XXIII.
§ Thereby adding a bird to the British list, see White's letter XXIV.
|| " Boston and The Hundred of Skirbeek," 1820, p. 368. Dawson
Rowley says that the tree at Leake was an ash, and that it was still
standing in 1822 (" Orn. Misc., III., p. 71).
INDEX
Aldrovandus, 162-3 ; his collection
visited by Ray, 163.
Animals destroyed by the Plague, 65.
Anser cinereus, 10S.
Auk, Great, 1, 24, 97, 193, 207.
Avocet, 127, 199 ; seen by Willughby,
224.
Aviaries, Roman, 17 ; of Henry the
Eighth, 81.
Baldnee, Leonard, a fowler of
Strasburg, 197-200 ; shoots a
Squacco Heron, 199 ; shoots a
Great See-flutter, 197.
Bargander, 203.
Belon, Pierre, 155-6 : his account
of the Sparrow-Hawk, 156.
Birds at Eltham Palace, 191 ; known
to the Romans, 14 ; Egyptian
figures of, 6 ; in the " Liber
Eliensis, " 36 ; prehistoric draw-
ings of, 2 ; in St. James's Park,
206 ; St. Cuthbert's, 46 ; of
Pliny, 15 ; eaten by Picts, 24.
Bittern, 68-71, 87, 90, 182-3; in the
le Straunge accounts, 133 ; Ges-
ner's account of, 160 ; Baldner's
account of, 198.
, Little, 229.
Blackgrouse, 102, 105.
Blackbird, 136.
Boar, Wild, 18.
Boece, Hector, 99.
Botaurus stellaris, 182.
Botoner, William, 76.
Brewe, 71 ; identity uncertain, 89, 90.
Brissel, The bird called, 103-105;
Newton's opinion of, 104.
Browne, Sir Thos., 200-205 ; his
ideas on migration, 202 : his
correspondence with Merrett, 204 ;
with someone unknown, 205 ;
writes of " Gulleries," 185 ; his
letters to Ray lost, 214 ; on
the Crane, 173.
Bustard, Great, status of, 173-6 ;
directions for carving, 174 ; in
Norfolk, 69, ] 28 ; in Scotland,
103 ; " Lode " (i.e., watercourse),
175 ; prehistoric drawings of, 3,
5 ; examined by Willughby, 224.
BusJard, Little, 229.
Buzzard, 16, 81, 153.
Capercaillie, 106, 224 ; in Ireland,
46, 67 ; in Scotland, 102.
Capon, 17, 87, 103, 107.
Chough, 91, 220.
Clusius, Carolus, 192-3 ; his Great
Auk, 193 ; grave of, 221.
" Cockle "-Ducks, 123.
Coot, 12, 73, 141, 199.
Cormorant, 162, 197, 221 ; at
Priestholm, 218.
Corncrake, 73.
Crane, 46, 50, 90 ; early notices of,
10, 13, 15, 23 ; taken by Gyr-
Falcons, 49-50 ; in Norfolk, 130-
131 ; in the larder of James V.,
94 ; status of, 164-173.
Crow, 16, 144.
Grocard, A name for the Gull, 191.
Crossbill, 58.
Cuckoo, 19, 73.
Curlew, 20, 57, 200.
, Stone, 125, 155.
Dale, Samuel, 185.
Decoys, 54, 74 ; that at Steeple the
oldest, 142.
Dotterel, 94, 158, 214.
Dove, 11, 117.
, Stock, 74, 90, 125.
Duck, Cockle-, 123.
, Gadwall, 198.
, Golden-eye, 198, 224.
. Pochard, 147, 198.
, St. Cuthbert's, 117.
, Scoter, 121, 204, 214.
, Sheld-, 3, 20, 123, 203.
, Shoveler, 233.
, Tufted, 204, 224.
, Wigeon. 123, 191.
, Wild, 3, 4, 70, 198.
Eagle, Golden, 44, 81, 102; pre-
historic drawing of, 3 ; nest at
Castle Dinas, 161 ; the Roman,
16.
Egret, 36, 87-90 ; Newton's opinion
about, 88.
, Great White, 155, 208 ; seen
by Willughby, 224.
238
EARLY ANNALS OP ORNITHOLOGY
Evelyn, John, 206-207 ; meets Sir
Thos. Browne, 206.
Egypt, figures of birds in, 6.
Falcon, Peregrine, 140.
Falconry, Early annals of, 22, 24,
26, 31, 48 ; Saxon, 26, 27.
Fame Islands, 47.
" Ffeddew," Name for the Godwit,
127 ; with Curlews, 128.
Fish, Obsolete names of, 56, 70, 87,
146 ; in 1089, 39.
Flamingo, 3, 5, 17 ; at Montpellier,
225.
Fowl, Domestic, 8, 16, 39, 56, 107.
, Getulian, 157 ; Castration of, 17.
Gallinule, Purple, 3.
Gannet, 92-5 ; in the " Codex
Exoniensis," 19 ; or Gant, origin
of the name, 95.
Geese, Tame, 56, 87, 109 ; Mr.
Gurney's recollections about
them in 1840, 108.
Gesner, Conrad, 158-161 ; describes
the Bittern, 160.
Gikaldds Cambrensis, 44.
Gladstone, H, 171, 176, 195.
" Glida," a name for the Kite, 80.
Godwit, 121, 171.
Goose, Brent, 92, 122, 157, 197.
, Grey-lag, 17, 108.
, Red-breasted, 6, 229.
, Solan, 92-5.
, Wild, 94, 103, 197.
Gordon, Robert, 195-6 ; describes
the Bass Rock, 195.
Goshawk, 102, 124, 149, 153 ; early
mentions of, 13, 32, 48 ; in the
7th century, 23.
Guillemot, 47, 204, 218 ; or Kiddaw,
220.
Guineafowl, 16, 94, 103, 157 ; not at
Hunstanton, 136.
Gull, Black-headed, 184-191 ; in the
sixteenth century, 137.
, Kittiwake, 117.
Gtjrney, Anna, translates the Saxon
Chronicle, 20.
, Robert, 187, 189.
" Gustarda," 158 ; the Bustard, 103.
Gyrfalcon, 23, 26, 49, 52 ; as tribute,
42.
Hakluyt, Richard, 96, 116.
Harenguier, the Gannet, 99.
Harrier, Marsh, 3.
, Hen, 153.
Harrison,' William, 108, 161-2;
his spelling of " Pawper," 179.
Hawking in the ninth and tenth
centuries, 22, 23, 26 ; in the
eleventh and twelfth, 31, 34, 40 ;
in the thirteenth, 49 ; in the
fifteenth, 84, 85 ; in the sixteenth,
138-141, 148-150.
Hawks' " mews," 41 ; fines paid in,
42, 53 ; waxen image of, 52 ;
a Sore, 53.
Herle, or " Hern," 94.
Heron, 87, 90; in the 13th century,
87 ; in the 14th century, 71 ;
in the 16th century, 94, 132.
, Eighty nests on one tree, 234.
, Night, 199, 221, 229.
, Purple, 198.
Higden, Ranulph, 67.
Hobby, 137, 204.
Household accounts of the le Straunges,
116-174; of the Shuttleworths,
147 ; of Hurstmonceux, 133 ;
of Naworth Castle, 187, 190 ;
of Henry VIII., 149, 170; of
James V., 171.
Hortus sanitatis, 81.
Howard, Lord William, 195 ; his
" solamossa geese," 195.
Ibis, Glossy, 3.
Jackdaw, 59, 79, 83.
Jay, 16.
Kay^ (or Caitjs), 157-8 ; his birth
and death, 163.
Kite, 73, 154-6 ; in the Saxon
Chronicle, 22 ; on a man's head,
80 ; at London Bridge, 82 ; on
the Bosphorus, 156.
Knot, 126, 147, 233.
Lark, 69, 71, 90, 157 ; served to James
V., 94 ; mentioned by Vergil, 83.
Larus ridibundus, 184.
le Stratjnge, of Hunstanton, 116;
larder accounts, 117-46 ; his
mansion, 119.
Lopeler or Lepler, 179.
Loom or Loon, 47.
Major, John, 91.
Magpie, 39, 51, 65 ; at Rouen, 17 ;
in Ireland., 67.
Maplet, John, 156.
Margot, The meaning of, 99.
Mallard, 69, 87.
, River, 71.
Menagerie of Charles II., 206.
Merganser, 155, 197.
Merlin, 102, 204.
INDEX.
239
Merrett, Christopher, 207-8.
Migration, First observers of, 9 ;
Brown's observations on, 202.
Mttffett, Dr. (or Moffett), 158 ;
sees Bustards, 175.
Mullens, W. H., 41, 86, 152 ; on an
anonymous pamphlet, 163.
Nets for Stints, 143 : for Woodcocks,
144, 192 ; for Wild-Ducks, 142 ;
for Ruffs, 230.
Newton, Professor, 104 ; on the
Goshawk, 29 ; his letters to
" Notes and Queries," 103, 106;
his opinion about the Crane, 167.
Nightingale, 67.
Norfolk, Map of, 178 ; Horsey in,
185; Swan rolls. 111.
Nutcracker, 223, 229.
Osprey, 154, 198 ; early references
to, 44, 157, 161 ; used for hawk-
ing, 162.
Otis tarda, 3, 173-6; the slow bird, 176.
Owen, George, 191-2 : his account
of the Woodcock, 191.
Owl, Barn, 154.
, Eagle, 155.
, Little, 224.
, Screech, 73.
, Short-eared, 234.
Pale-Poche in Brittany, 156.
Partridge, 69-71 ; in the twelfth
century, 39 ; in the fifteenth
century, 90 ; in the sixteenth
century, 94, 103, 134.
, Red-legged, 203.
Peacock" enhakyll," 107.
Peafowl, 51, 57, 103 ; introduced by
the Romans, 17 ; in the fifteenth
century, 86, 90 ; in the sixteenth
century, 107, 136.
Pelican, 12, 28 ; at a coronation
dinner, 86.
Pennant, Thos., 228-35 ; on the
Crane, 169.
Pheasant, in the twelfth century, 39 ;
brought by Romans, 17 ; in 1289,
57 ; other early references, 70,
71, 87.
Pigeon, 8, 9, 51, 125.
, Wood, 81, 222.
Platalea leucorodia, 177.
Plot, Robert, 186.
Plover, 16, 70, 71, 90-94, 103.
, Golden, 122, 199.
, Gray, 147.
, White, 127.
Popelar, 179, 131 ; or Popler, 179.
Puffin, 62, 64, 77, 138 ; kept alive
by Caius, 157 ; known as mullet,
117.
Quail, 9, 46, 90: or " Qualve," 94;
in Norfolk, 134, 203.
Raven, 3, 16, 46, 73 ; Folklore of,
31 ; in the Saxon Chronicle, 22 ;
Variety of, 158.
Ray, John, 215-25 ; his first itiner-
ary, 215 ; his second itinerary,
216 ; his third itinerary, 217 ; his
journey through Europe, 222.
Razorbill. 1.
Redshank, 94, 199, 233.
" Bees " (Ruffs and Reeves), 87-89.
Robin, 72, 73.
Rook, 73, 145 ; Acts about the,
81, 144.
Ruff, 199 ; figured by Aldrovandus,
163 ; seventy-two netted by one
man, 230.
Scoulton Mere in Norfolk, 185.
Shovelar, a name for the Spoonbill,
181, 132; spelled Shouelard, 178.
Sildebas, the Herring-bird, 95.
Skindernis, the Gannet, 95.
Snipe, 46, 69, 71, 90, 209; in the
le Straunge accounts, 126.
, Jack, 117, 147.
Solan Goose, 92-5 ; remains of, 1, 2,
24 ; legends about, 29, 30 ; at
Lundy Island, 60-62.
Sparrow, 72; " Phyllyp," 81, 91 ;
given as rent, 137.
Sparrow-hawk, 32, 102, 139, 153, 156.
Spoonbill, 3, 58, 73, 131 ; breeding
in Norfolk, 178 ; in Scotland, 180 ;
J. E. Harting on the, 177.
Spowe, or " Spoe," 124.
Starling, 19, 20, 73, 79 ; destructive
to reeds, 232.
Stint, 87, 143.
Stork, White, 3, 5, 72 ; at Edinburgh,
80 ; on the Hellespont, 155.
, Black, 223.
Sula serrator, 30.
Swallow, 72 ; of the classics, 11.
stone, 31.
Swan, 57, 69-71, 82-90, 94, 109 ;
old names for, 114; -pit at
Norwich, 115 ; rights, 110 ; rolls,
111.
, Wild-, 46, 123.
Ticehurst, N. F., 57, 130, 174.
Teal, 16, 57, 94, 124.
, Garganey, 204.
240
EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY
Thrush, 16, 39, 70.
Trumbono, a name for the Bittern,
160.
Turberville's " Boke of Faulconrie,"
148.
Turkey, 94, 103-106 ; date of its
introduction, 105.
Turner, William, 151-5 ; his
" Avium Praecipuarum," 152 ;
translated by Evans, 182; me-
morial tablet to, 155.
Vergil, Polydore, 83.
Water Hen, 142, 233.
Rail, 148, 199, 224.
Waxwing, 204.
Whimbrel, 71, 125.
Willughby, Francis, 208-12 ; his
home at Middleton, 208 ; monu-
ment to, 209 ; and Ray, 212-15 ;
visits Caldev, 189.
Wind, effect of/ 9, 202.
Winder, a name for the Wigeon, 191.
Woodcock, 16, 46, 69, 71, 78, 87 ;
nets for, 144 ; Owen's account
of the, 191.
