8 Lost British Birds. 



the " Platea or Shovelard " of Sir Thomas Browne was the 

 shoveller duck. This point has now been cleared up, and Mr. 

 J. E. Harting has found accounts in' old records of breeding- 

 places of the spoonbill in other parts of England. In the 

 Zoologist, 1 877, p. 425, he tells us of one which existed in 

 the woods at East Dean, near Chichester, in 1570. He 

 made the still more interesting discovery that spoonbills 

 had a breeding-place, or heronry, in the Bishop of London's 

 park, or grounds, at Fulham. It appears that in the 14th 

 year of the reign of Henry VIII., the bishop brought an 

 action of trespass against a grazier for taking herons and 

 spoonbills from the trees, which had been reserved. An 

 account of the trial of the case, in which the grazier was 

 happily worsted, is given in the Zoologist, 1886, p. 81. 



Harting adds that Norden, who himself lived at Fulham, 

 tells us in his Speculum Britannise (1593), that "the name 

 of the place was anciently written Fullenham, or Fullonham, 

 which (as Master Camden taketh it) signifyeth volucrum 

 domus, the habitacle of birdes, or the place of fowles, Fullon 

 and Fuglas in the Saxon toong do signifie fowles, and ham 

 or hame as much as home in our toong." 



Fulham keeps its name, also its Bishop's Palace, but is no 

 longer the "habitacle of birdes." 



III. CAPERCAILLIE Tetrao urogallus. This noble bird 

 of the pines became totally extinct in Scotland as long ago 

 as 1760, and in Ireland its final extinction occurred about 

 the same time. There is, however, evidence to show that 

 for a century and a half before that date the bird was very 

 scarce in Scotland ; and that, on account of its rarity and 

 the esteem it was held in for the table, it was very much 

 sought after. The large male bird, in his magnificent black 

 and green glossed plumage, formed indeed a suitable present 

 to princes and nobles in former days. Its departure was 

 thus hastened ; but Mr. Harvie-Brown attributes its ex- 

 tinction to the destruction of great forests by fire, the 

 cutting down of the same by man as late as the days of 



