30 THE GANNET 



imperfection in the block, the latter perhaps the effect of 

 confinement, for the drawing of this bird was sent to him 

 from Scotland by Henry St. Clare (or Sinclair),* who may 

 have kept it alive. 



2. Clusius'figuretis taken from a drawing sent to him, with 

 one of the Mergus am^ericanus (the Great Auk) — also copied 

 on the same page (p. 103) — from America, by " ornatissimus 

 vir Jacobus Plateau." The figure is a poor one, but seems, as 

 Professor Newton remarks, to have been done from a real bird. 



3. Willughby and Ray give a figure in their well-known 

 " Ornithologia," 1676 (Tab. lxiii.), which is good, though 

 the tail is not pointed enough : perhaps it was drawn 

 from the example picked up at Coleshil, in Warwickshire, 

 and described in their work {I.e., p. 329), and they may have 

 made some attempt to keep the bird alive. 



4. Sir Robert Sibbald. in his " Scotia Illustrata " (1684) 

 gives three figures : — Tab. ix., Fig. 1 : Caput veteris Anseris 

 Bassani ; Fig. 2 : Anser Bassanus junior ; Fig. 3 : Pes 

 senioris, all of which are creditably executed for the time 

 when they were done, and appropriately embellish the work 

 of this prolific author. In his later work — a " History of the 

 Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross" (1710) — he has a long 



* Professor Newton observes that this seems to have been Henry Sinclair, 

 Bishop of Ross (born 1508, died 1505), who also sent Gesner figures of the 

 Great Bustard and Capercaillie. 



f " Caroli Clusii atrebatis Exoticorum Libri decern.," 1605. Book V., 

 Ch. VII. 



