14 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. xiii. 



seventeen years later than the pamphlet now under notice. 

 Aldrovandus gives a considerable account and seven illus- 

 trations of the Ruff and Reeve specimens of which and 

 details of their habits he received from a correspondent 

 in the Low Countries, and observes, among other particulars, 

 " They say that these birds are likewise found in England," 

 but though he gives no authority for this statement, the 

 source of his information is apparent when his seventh 

 figure of the bird (here reproduced in facsimile) is compared 

 with that in the frontispiece of the pamphlet. It may be 

 mentioned in passing that none of the great contemporaries 

 or predecessors of Aldrovandus made any mention of the 

 Ruff. The chief of these were William Turner (1500-1568), 

 whose Avium Hisioria appeared at Cologne in 1544, and to 

 whom we owe our first accoimt of British birds : Conrad 

 Gesner (1516-1561), who published at Zurich in 1555 his 

 third volume of The History of Animals, which deals exclusively 

 with birds,* and Pierre Belon of Mons {ob. 1564), who in 

 that same year issued from the sign of the " Fat Hen " in 

 Paris his History of the nature of Birds with their descriptions 

 and portraits."^ 



Although the New English Dictionary gives a reference 

 to the use of the word Reeve as the female of Ruff in 1634 

 (Althorp MS.), and another to its presence in Herrick's Hesper, 

 Panygeric Sir L. Pemberton, no further mention of the 

 Ruff occurs until we find it included in Christopher Merrett's 

 (1614-95) Pinax Reruni, 1666. The Pinax which contains 

 the first extensive list of British Birds has " Avis pugnax 

 J. 154 t. 52 A Rough est tertia in Tab " which being trans- 

 lated reads "Avis pugnax Johnstonus'^ [Historic Naturalis 

 1650-53] page 154, plate 52, a Rough, this is the third figure 

 given in the plate." A reference to Johnstonus, however, 

 shows that he derived the whole of his account of the Ruff, 

 which he describes under title Avis pugnax from Aldrovandus, 



* Title, HistoricB Animalium, Liber in., qui est de Avium Natura. 

 t Title, L'Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux, avec leur descriptions, 

 et naifs portraicts, . . . escrite en sept livres, 

 % Johannes Johnstonus (1603-75). 



