438 GRUID^. 



Gnus. Generic Characters. — Beak longer than the head, straight, strong, 

 compressed, and pointed. Nostrils placed longitudinally in a furrow, large, 

 pervious, closed posteriorly by a membrane. Legs, long, strong, naked above 

 the joint; three toes in front; middle toe united to the outer toe by a mem- 

 brane ; hind toe articulated high up on the tarsus. Wings moderate, rounded 

 in form ; the first quill-feather shorter than the second ; the third the longest in 

 the wing. 



Though at the present time only an occasional and very rare 

 visiter to this country, the Crane was formerly much more 

 frequent. Dr. Turner states that he had often seen the 

 young birds in our marshes. Sir Thomas Browne of Nor- 

 wich, who wrote in the time of Charles the Second, says in 

 his works, " Cranes are often seen here in hard winters, 

 especially about the champian and fieldy part. It seems 

 they have been more plentiful, for in a bill of fare, when the 

 mayor entertained the Duke of Norfolk, I met with Cranes 

 in a dish."* In the Norfolk Household Book, already 

 quoted, vmder the articles on the Pheasant and Great Bus- 

 tard, I find three separate notices of Cranes ; the first for a 

 Crane and vi Plovers, xxd. ; the second, four Mallards and 

 a Crane killed with the Crossbowe ; the third, item, on 

 Thursday for a Crane, vid. ; Avhile in Dugdale"'s Origines 

 Juridiciales, as quoted at page 366, we find that the price 

 of a Crane in London was 10s. Leland, in his Collectanea, 

 includes in the bill of fare at the feast of Archbishop Neville, 

 two hundred and four Cranes ; and, according to Sir David 

 Lindsay, Cranes formed also part of the bill of fare at a grand 

 hunting entertainment, given by the Earl of Athol to James 

 the Fifth of Scotland and the Queen Mother, on the banks 

 of the Loghaine, in Glen Tilt. Ray mentions the winter 

 visits of this large bird ; and Willughby, in an abridgment 

 of some statutes relating to the preservation of fowl, refers at 

 page 52 to a fine of twenty pence levied as a forfeit for every 



* Wilkin's edition, vol. iv. p. 314. — Pickering, 1835. 



