CRANE. GRALLATORES. GRUS. 5 
Common Crane, Penn. Br. Zool. 2. App. 629. t. 6.—Arct. Zool. 2. p- 453. A. 
—Will. (Angl.) 274.—Lath. Syn. 5. p. 50. 5.—Mont. Ornith. Dict.—ZId. 
Sup.—Lath. Syn. Sup. 2. 298, 2.—Bewick’s Br. Birds, 2. 29.—Shaw’s 
Zool. 11. p. 524. pl. 40. 
In earlier times, when the country was not so well peopled, 
and vast tracts of land remained uninclosed, this majestic 
and elegant bird (if we are to credit the accounts transmit- 
ted to us by the ornithologists of those days) appears to 
have visited Britain with great regularity during the periods 
of its migrations, most probably during its summer or polar 
movement (though Ray mentions winter visits), as ALDRO- 
VANDUs speaks of their breeding in the fens and marshes of 
Cambridgeshire. This fact is corroborated by WitLoucHBy, 
who, in enumerating the statutes for the preservation of wild 
fowl, quotes one of them as imposing a penalty of twenty 
pence upon any one who shall take away the egg of a Crane 
or Bustard. As enclosures became more frequent, and com- 
mons and fens, the appropriate haunts of these birds for ni- 
dification, were drained, the Crane, with several other spe- 
cies (as the Bustard, @dicneme, &c.) seem rapidly to have 
decreased in numbers, and by degrees to have deserted the 
island, as no longer affording them either security, or the 
peculiarities of soil and situation necessary to their economy. 
Accordingly Mr Pennant, who wrote upwards of fifty years 
ago, mentions the Crane as a bird at that time almost un- 
known, even in those districts where it had, at an earlier pe- 
riod, been represented as quite common ; and he instances a 
single individual killed in 1773, as the only one that had 
been seen in England during his time. It still continues 
equally rare, and appears to have permanently changed the 
line of its migrations, for (in addition to the above mention- 
ed instance by Pennant) I can only cite a small flock that 
visited Zetland during the harvest of 1807, as recorded by 
Montacu and the Rev. Dr FLEminc, out of which one was 
shot *. These circumstances, therefore, only entitle it to 
“ Since writing the above, I have received information that a Crane 
was killed in Oxfordshire, in December 1830. (7/22 /e2 v/ Aillen o 
(fy wales bl ff, I] 
‘ iat hice F716 Verfelf../S50. 
