32 Mr. J. H. Gurney — Comparative 



thus engraved : — "This goodlie Hawk doth belong to his Most 

 Excellent Majestic James, Kingc of England, a.d. 1610.'^ 

 The anecdote is barely crediblcj for a Hawk with a ring 

 round its neck — a primitive method (Norw. N. Tr. iii. p. 88) — 

 is not very likely to have lived 180 years or to have flown 

 6500 miles. Another Falcon is said to have attained 162 

 (Knauer, ' Der Naturhistoriker ') . 



Pelecanid^. 



Willughby, on the authority of Schaad, tells his readers 

 of a Pelican of 40 in the Duke of Bavaria's court, while 

 Aldrovandus tells of another at Mechlin, in Brabant, known 

 to be 50, and believed to be 80 {' Ornithologia,' xix. p. 22) . 

 Turner also tells of one of 50, perhaps the same (Hist. 

 Avium). Pelicans have been known to live a long time 

 in various zoological gardens, even where they have had 

 no sheet of water to sail about on. We learn, for instance, 

 that " of a great number of Pelicans kept in the men- 

 agerie at Versailles none died in the space of 12 years " 

 (Mem. de FAcad. des Sci.), a record which Pelecanus onu- 

 crotalus, P. conspicUlatus, and P. crispus, the property of 

 the Zoological Society, can easily beat, under the guardianship 

 of their watchful keeper, T. Church. 



At Botterdam there is a Pelican of 41 still living. 



But enough has been said to show the considerable duration 

 of life of the Pelecanidce under the most favoured circum- 

 stances. 



Ardeid^. 

 Herons have been often ringed by hawking clubs and 

 afterwards retaken, affording well-attested cases of longevity 

 in a wild state and of migratory wanderings as well [cf. 

 ' Birds of Norfolk,' ii. p. 139 ; ' Birds of Suffolk,' p. 158) , It 

 will be sufficient to give the particulars of the two oldest only. 

 In the ^Annual Register' for 1767, under date July 7th, 

 readers are informed that ''As the Prince Stadtholder [of 

 Holland] Avas taking the diversion of hawking, he caught a 

 Heron with a brass inscription round its legs, setting forth 



