Anas Anser 23 



Besides the two kinds thus described by Aristotle and 

 Pliny I know of a bird, of which, if it should not be properly 

 ascribed to the Kingfisher tribe, I really cannot say under 

 what head it ought to go. It is a little smaller than 

 a Starling, with the body wholly black, except for a white 

 belly, and it has the tail comparatively short, the beak a little 

 shorter than the Kingfisher. Before a flight it dips repeatedly, 

 after the manner of the Kingfisher, and cries out as it flies ; 

 it is so like the Kingfisher in voice that, if you did not see 

 it, you would swear it was a Kingfisher. I have observed 

 it on the banks of streams not far from the sea-side, but 

 nowhere else. It lives on little fishes, like the aforesaid kinds 

 of Kingfishers. I never saw its nest The inhabitants of 

 Morpeth, where I saw the bird, call it a water craw 1 . 



OF THE ANAS. 

 N^rra, anas, in English a duck, in German eyn endt. 



PLINY. 



Anates only, and birds of like kind, rise in the 

 air at once, and make straight for the sky, and that 

 even from the water. 



OF THE ANSER. 



Xrjv, anser, in English a goose, in German eyn ganss. 



Aristotle agrees with Pliny in making two chief kinds of 

 Geese, the latter separating them into the greater and the 

 less, the former into tame and wild. But Pliny tells us that 

 besides these two chief kinds of Geese, there are of the 

 Goose kind Penelopes and Chenalopeces, as one text has it, 

 as another goes, Chenalopeces and Chenerotes. The first 

 reading stands thus : 



1 The bird meant is undoubtedly the Water Ousel or Dipper (Cinclus 

 aquaticus), which still goes by the name of Water Craw in the north of 

 England. It is curious that Turner should never have seen its nest when 

 he was in Northumberland. 



