414 SCOLOPACID.E. 



King Canute, and this derivation, which after all is the 

 best which has yet been suggested, appears to have been 

 generally accepted at and subsequently to that period. Thus 

 Drayton in his 'Polyolbion ' (1622), 25th song : 



The Knot, that called was Canutus Bird of old. 



Of that great King of Danes, his name that still doth hold, 



His apetite to please, that farre and neere was sought, 



For him (as some have sayd) from Denmarke hither brought." 



Willughby (1678) substantially gives the same reason for 

 the name, and Pennant and later writers have but para- 

 phrased the foregoing. Down to the latter part of the 

 seventeenth century Knots were regularly fattened for the 

 table, and Sir Thomas Browne describes how they are taken 

 in nets, and "grow excessively fat, being mewed and fed 

 with corn. A candle lighted in the room, they feed day and 

 night, and when they are at their height of fatness, they 

 begin to grow lame, and are then killed as at their prime 

 and apt to decline." Willughby says that, " being fed with 

 white bread and milk, they grow very fat, and are accounted 

 excellent meat." 



A few old birds, probably barren ones, in somewhat faded 

 summer plumage are to be seen, according to Mr. Cordeaux, 

 on the coasts of Lincolnshire in July ; and in the first week 

 in August the young birds make their appearance, their 

 parents arriving, as a rule, somewhat later. A considerable 

 number of the migrants remain until the middle of the 

 following May, by which time they have either partially or 

 entirely assumed the fine red tints of plumage peculiar to 

 their breeding state. From the south still more richly- 

 coloured adults arrive about this time, and the entire body 

 take their departure for the north, only a few odd birds 

 remaining until later, or throughout the summer. A 

 specimen in full breeding-plumage is mentioned by Mr. 

 R. Gray as having been shot on Islay on the 30th July, 

 1870, probably on its return. In the northern portions of 

 our islands comparatively few remain during the winter if 

 the weather prove at all severe, but when such is the case, 

 large accessions arrive from abroad. Nowhere are they 



