CRANE. 125 



molluscs and crustaceans. With such a diet one would 

 scarcely expect to find them any great delicacy for the 

 table, but Mr. Dowell, who has eaten them, describes the 

 flesh as " fairly good" ; and in by-gone days, when 

 sea-gulls formed part of the bill of fare, oyster-catchers 

 would seem, also, to have been much esteemed. In the 

 '' Northumberland Household Book " we find the follow- 

 ing order, "Item See-Pyes for my Lorde at Princypall 

 Feestes and non other tyme ;" but abundant as they 

 must have been in former times on the Hunstanton 

 beach, this species occurs but once in the " L'Estrange 

 Accounts," viz., "The xxxviijth weke," 1525, "It. pd 

 to Nicholas Grey for a sepye, a redshancke, and a 

 stynte, ij<i-" 



CRUS CINEREA, Bechst. 



CRANE. 



That the Crane formerly bred in England, the terms 

 of an Act of Parliament, passed in 1533, and already 

 quoted in the account of the bustard (p. 11) leaves no 

 room for doubt, as the fine of twenty-pence was thereby 

 imposed upon every person who should " withdraw, 

 purloin, take, destroy, or convey," any egg of this 

 species. But whether the crane ever bred in Norfolk 

 must remain an open question. Turner, a few years 

 later, says ("Avium Historia, Colonise:" 1548), that 

 " earum jpij^iones ipse scepissime vidi j^' and as Turner, 

 though a Northumbrian by birth, was educated and lived 

 for nearly fifteen years at Cambridge,* it seems not 

 unlikely that his personal acquaintance with the "pipers" 



* Cooper's "Atlienaa Cantabrigienses," vol. i., pp. 256-258. 



