CRANE. GRALLATORES. GRUS. 5 



Common Crane, Penn. Br. ZooL 2. App. 629. t. 6 Arct. Zool. 2. p. 453. A. 

 Will (Angl.) 2J4.Lath. Syn. 5. p. 50. 5 Mont. Ornith. Diet Id. 

 Sup Lath. Syn. Sup. 2. 298. 2 Bewick's Br. Birds, 2. 29. Shaw's 

 Zool 11. p. 524. pi. 40. 



IN earlier times, when the country was not so well peopled, 

 and vast tracts of land remained uninclosed, this majestic 

 and elegant bird (if we are to credit the accounts transmit- 

 ted to us by the ornithologists of those days) appears to 

 have visited Britain with great regularity during the periods 

 of its migrations, most probably during its summer or polar 

 movement (though RAY mentions winter visits), as ALDRO- 

 VANDUS speaks of their breeding in the fens and marshes of 

 Cambridgeshire. This fact is corroborated by WILLOUGHBY, 

 who, in enumerating the statutes for the preservation of wild 

 fowl, quotes one of them as imposing a penalty of twenty 

 pence upon any one who shall take away the egg of a Crane 

 or Bustard. As enclosures became more frequent, and com- 

 mons and fens, the appropriate haunts of these birds for ni- 

 dification, were drained, the Crane, with several other spe- 

 cies (as the Bustard, (Edicneme, &c.) seem rapidly to have 

 decreased in numbers, and by degrees to have deserted the 

 island, as no longer affording them either security, or the 

 peculiarities of soil and situation necessary to their economy. 

 Accordingly Mr PENNANT, who wrote upwards of fifty years 

 ago, mentions the Crane as a bird at that time almost un- 

 known, even in those districts where it had, at an earlier pe- 

 riod, been represented as quite common ; and he instances a 

 single individual killed in 1773, as the only one that had 

 been seen in England during his time. It still continues 

 equally rare, and appears to have permanently changed the 

 line of its migrations, for (in addition to the above mention- 

 ed instance by PENNANT) I can only cite a small flock that 

 visited Zetland during the harvest of 1807, as recorded by 

 MONTAGU and the Rev. Dr FLEMING, out of which one was 

 shot*. These circumstances, therefore, only entitle it to 



* Since writing the above, I have received information that a Crane 

 was killed in Oxfordshire, in December 1830. 



