( 18 ) 

 THE RUFF— AN EARLY RECORD. 



BY 



W. H. MULLENS, m.a., ll.m. 

 At the dispersal of the famous Ashburnham Library in 1897- 

 there was sold for the sum of nineteen guineas a small eight- 

 paged, black letter pamphlet, of which the facsimile title 

 page or cover is here figured. 



Probably, as a note in the copy before us suggests, it is 

 one of the very few now in existence, and it certainly is of 

 the utmost rarity, but at the time of its publication it must 

 have attracted considerable attention and have achieved 

 a somewhat extensive circulation, for, as we shall see later,, 

 it undoubtedly came under the observation of that illustrious 

 author and most accomplished plagiarist, Ulyses Aldrovandus 

 (1522-1605), then residing at Bologna in Italy. 



But apart from its rarity, this quaint tract is certainly 

 of very considerable interest to the student of early Orni- 

 thology, inasmuch as it appears to contain not only the 

 earliest mention of the title Ruff or Ruffe as applied to 

 Machetes ptignax and the first record of that bird in the 

 British Isles, but is also, as far as we have been able to ascer- 

 tain, the first printed work in which the figure or description 

 of the Ruff is to be found. The pamphlet, as an examination 

 of its text will show, was clearly written as a protest against 

 certain extravagant fashions in the dress of that period, but 

 the fact that " Divers Fowlers were sent for to see them, but 

 neither could tel what Foules they were, or ever had scene 

 or hearde of the like " would certainly seem to warrant 

 the conclusion that the Ruff was up to that time an unknown 

 or at least an unobserved bird in the Lincolnshire Fens. 



It has hitherto been generally accepted that the earliest 



reference to the Ruff was that given by Aldrovandus under 



title " Avis Pugnax " in the first edition of the third volume 



of his History of Birds* published at Bologna in 1603 or some 



* This was the " third and last tome " of the History of Birds 1599- 

 1603 forming part of the thirteen folio volumes of Aldrovandus dealing, 

 with Natural History, many of which were however posthumously 

 published under his name. Its title is as follows, Ornothologice 

 hoc est de avibus Histories, Libri XII, 



