BLACK TERN. 313 



latinising the English word^ which he writes " sterna; " 

 but particularising its small size and blackish colour.* 

 Turner [p. 64] spoke of its excessive clamour during the 

 breeding season, which was enough to deafen those who 

 lived near the lakes and marshes it frequented, and as he 

 was personally acquainted with the fen. district of the 

 Eastern Counties, his experience may not impossibly have 

 been derived from that portion of it bordering upon or 

 comprised in Norfolk. Pennant, in his regrettably short 

 description of the East Fen, which he visited in 1769, 

 writesf in almost similar terms : " The pewit gulls 

 and black terns abound ; the last in vast flocks almost 

 deafen one with their clamors." What the East Fen of 

 Lincolnshire then was, the south-western corner of 

 Norfolk continued for some years longer, and in Feb- 

 ruary, 1853, William Spencer, of Feltwell, whose name 

 has appeared before in this work (vol. iii., p. 3), 

 told Professor Newton and his brother, Sir Edward, 

 that he as a lad recollected " starns," as he pronounced 

 the name, being very numerous, and especially common 

 at Poppylot in that parish, on the border of Southery. 

 Their eggs, he said, were of no use except to put in 

 lapwing's nests, as the latter would " lay to " them. 

 This statement probably refers to the first fifteen or 

 twenty years of the present century, as it was made 

 when he was fifty-three years of age. On the opposite 

 side of the county we have evidence of its breeding much 

 about the same time, for Whitear, in his diary, says 

 (" Trans. Norf. and Nor. Nat. Soc.," iii., p. 243), under 

 date of 2nd July, 1816, that he went shooting with a 

 friend "in the marshes between Winterton and Horsey," 

 and among the birds killed he mentions the black tern, 

 adding that they found an egg said to have belonged to 



* Prof. Newton, however, points out that it must be admitted 

 that Willughby (Lat., p. 268 ; Eng., p. 352) took Turner's sterna 

 in the general sense of tern as we now use it. He imagined it 

 was derived from the north-country term tarn (a small lake), not 

 knowing that it existed with but little change in cognate tongues, 

 and with absolutely none in Dutch. Turner's latinised form, 

 having been repeated by Gesner and other writers, has come to be 

 recognised by all ornithologists as the well known generic name. 



t See his first " Tour in Scotland," ed. 5, p. 12. 

 2R 



