of the Birds of Ireland. 273 



hundred being sometimes seen in a flock. If the bird meant 

 by that author were the true crane {Grus cinerea\ and not 

 the heron (Ardea cinerea)^ commonly called by that name in 

 Ireland to the present day, the stately bird would seem to 

 have been once as common here as it was in early times in 

 England. The latest published record of its occurrence in 

 this island known to me, is that of Smith, who, in his His- 

 tories of Waterford (1745) and Cork (1749), remarks, that a 

 few were seen in those counties during the great frost of 

 1739. They are mentioned as birds of passage, which do 

 not breed ; and in the former work are said not to have been 

 seen " since or before, in any person's memory." Two in- 

 stances of the occurrence of single individuals in Ireland in 

 the present century will be found noticed under the species 

 in the present work. That noble bird, the cock of the wood 

 {Tetrao urogallus), was plentiful throughout the native forests 

 of Ireland, but has long since become extinct, the last bird 

 having been killed about a century since. The great bustard 

 {Otis tarda), too, an inhabitant of the open plain, disappeared 

 about the same period. 



In " A brife Description of Ireland made in this yeere 

 1589, by Robert Payne,'' it is stated, — *' There be great store 

 of wild swannes, * * * much more plentiful than in 

 England." Harris, in his History of the County of Down, 

 published in 1744. remarks of the wild swan {Cygnus ferus): 

 " Great numbers of them breed in the islands of Strang- 

 ford Lake," p. 233. In another part of the volume it 

 is observed : — " Four of these islands are called srcan islands, 

 from the number of swans that frequent them," p. 154. That 

 these fine birds built there at so comparatively late a period 

 may seem doubtful ; but it should be borne in mind that Low, 

 in his Fauna Orcadensis, written at the end of the last 

 century, informs us that " a few pairs build in the holms of 

 of the Loch Stennes," in Orkney.* Rutty, in his Natural 

 History of the County of Dublin, published in 1772, ob- 

 serves : — " There are two sorts (of * wild goose, Anser fertts*). 



* No date is given ; the author died in 1796. His work was not published 

 until 1813. 



