VOL. xv.J REVIEW. 1G5 



" Sokyrton, Co. Durham. In the seventeenth year of I^ishop 

 Hatfield, 1361, Margaret, late wife of Robert Orleans, held of the Lord 

 Bishop ill capite one messuage and fifteen acres of land ... in Sokyr- 

 ton by paying {inter alia) yearly . . . one hen called a wood-hen [et 

 itnam gallinam, voc. woodhcn.)" 



It is most probable that this Wood-hen was the Capercailhe. 



Carew, Richard (i 555-1620) is merely mentioned in a 

 note on p. 136 Annals, but he is well worthy of inclusion, not 

 only on account of his considerable description of several 

 local birds in his Survey of Cornwall, London, 1602, but because 

 his work is the earliest of our County histories to deal with 

 local ornithology. There were three subsequent editions of 

 The Survey, viz. 1723, 1769, 1811. 



. Charleton, Walter. — One of the most serious omissions 

 in the Annals is that of all reference to the works of Walter 

 Charleton (1619-1707). This remarkable man, whose princi- 

 pal work, so far as touches our subject, the Onomasticon 

 Zoicon, was published in 1668, was the first of the English 

 writers to append illustrations to a list of birds, and these are 

 in themselves so excellent and so far in advance of the badly 

 executed figures in Willughby's well-known Ornithology 

 }>ublished seven years later, that we here reproduce three of 

 them for the information of the reader. The Onomasticon 

 contains some fifty-six pages concerning birds, and contains 

 many important observations on those of this country, and 

 also includes an account of Charles II. menagerie in St. 

 James's Park. In his preface Charleton tells us that in addition 

 to the assistance he had received from observing the living 

 liirds in the menagerie, of which he writes : — [Translation 

 from Latin] . 



" It contains such a multitude of beasts and birds . . . brought 



thither from the utmost corners of the earth . . . that you may, by 



no means without cause, believe that you are present at the entry 

 into Noah's Ark for the second time of all living things." 



He had also studied the specimens in the Museum of the Royal 

 Society, and that he had moreover — 



" derived no mean help from the pursuit of fouling which I have 

 constantly and keenly practiced from boyhood (. . . having no great 

 love for anatomy). How many times has some bird either hitherto 

 insufficiently known to me or new to the British Isles been perchance 

 discovered and as is my wont I have followed it up and shot it flying 

 with my hand gun, then with it thus in my possession, having first 

 consulted Aldrovandus* and Johnstonus as to its name and nature, 

 I have duly recorded it in the above mentioned Tables." 



* Ulyses Aldrovandus, author of Historia de Avibits, 1599. 



