444 THE GANNET 



considerable way. Sir Thomas Browiie, the famous 

 Norfolk physician, who lived in the reign of Charles II., 

 cites two instances of the kind, one of them relating to 

 a Gannet caught by a greyhound near S waff ham. Two 

 hundred years later and history repeats itself — the late 

 Mr. Southwell recording a Gannet attacked by a dog 

 but killed with a stick, near the very place mentioned by 

 Sir Thomas Browne.* Nehemiah Grew (1669) cites another 

 of these poor waifs " by some means fall'n on the ground," 

 and John Morton a third. t Grew is referring to the same 

 Gannet which Ray and Willughby had already described 

 as having been found in November, 1669, alive near 

 Coleshill in Warwickshire. 



Having once alighted on the ground Gannets feel them- 

 selves too incapacitated by their long wings ever to 

 attempt to rise again, and are therefore caught or killed 

 by the first passer-by, whence originated the idea to 

 which some early writers give expression, that they 

 could not fly over land. 



But it is not only in Great Britain that Gannets have 

 been picked up inland ; their presence very far from the 

 sea has been certified in Holland, Belgium, Norway, 



* Morris's "Naturalist," 1855, p. 165. 



f'Nat. Hist. Northamptonshire," 1712, p. 429. 



