BIRDS: BITTERNS, HERONS, HAWKS, ETC. 65 



he was in Italy, was at the great Duke of Tuscany's court entertained with all the rarities that the 

 country afforded, but he sawe no pheasants. Mr. Wyld Clarke, factor fifteen yeares in Barberie, 

 affimies there are none there. Sir John Mordaunt, who had a command at Tangier twenty-five 

 yeares, and had been some time governour there, a great lover of field sports, affirmes that there are 

 no pheasants in Africa or Spaine. [See Ray's Letter to Aubrey, ante, page 8.] 



Bitterns in the breaches at Allington, &c. Herons bred heretofore, sc. about 1580, at Easton- 

 Piers, before the great oakes were felled down neer the mannour-house ; and they doe still breed in 

 Farleigh Parke. An eirie of sparrow-hawkes at the parke at Kington St. Michael. The hobbies 



doe goe away at and return at the spring. Quaere Sir James Long, if any other hawkes 



doe the like ? 



Ganders are vivacious animals. Farmer Ady of Segary had a gander that was fifty yeares old, 

 which the soldiers killed. He and his gander were both of the same age. (A goose is now living, 

 anno 1757, at Hagley hall in Worcestershire, full fifty yeares old. MS. NOTE.) 



Sea-mewes. Plentie of them at Colern-downe ; elsewhere in Wiltshire I doe not remember any. 

 There are presages of weather made by them. [Instead of " presages of weather," the writer would 

 have been more accurate if lie had said that when " sea-mewes," or other birds of the ocean, are seen 

 so far inland as Golem, at least twenty miles from the sea, they indicate stormy weather in their 

 natural element. J. B.] Virgil's Georgics, lib. i. Englished by Mr. T. May: 



" The seas are ill to sailors evermore 

 When cormorants fly crying to the shore ; 

 From the mid-sea when sea-fowl pastime make 

 Upon dry land ; when herns the ponds forsake, 

 And, mounted on their wings, doe fly aloft." 



