FOUND IN NORFOLK. 7 



In hard winters elkes' a kind of wild swan are seen in 

 no small numbers, in whom & not in coifion swans is 

 remarkable that strange recurvation of the windpipe 

 through the sternon. & the same is also obseruable in 

 cranes, tis probable they come very farre for all the 

 northern discouerers have [ha struck oui\ obserued them 

 in the remotest parts & like diuers [&] other northern 

 birds if the winter bee mild they comonly come no 

 further southward then Scotland if very hard they go 

 lower & seeke more southern places, wch is the cause 

 that sometimes wee see them not before Christmas or 

 the hardest time of winter. 



A white large & strong billd fowle called a Ganet' 



^ The " Elke " is an obsolete name for the Wild Swan (Cygnus musicus), 

 which occurs in the present day in the same numbers and under precisely 

 similar circumstances as Browne describes ; but of course this was the 

 only species of wild swan known to him. The remarkable recurvation of 

 the trachea within the keel of the sternum, which also prevails to a greater 

 or less degree in four out of the five or six species of Cygnus found in the 

 Northern Hemisphere, did not escape Browne's notice, although he was not 

 the first to describe it, and he rightly observes that this peculiarity is absent 

 in the Mute Swan (C. olor), but exists in a different and even more 

 exaggerated form in the Crane. He, however, was mistaken as to the 

 extreme northerly range which he assigns to this species. So marked a 

 feature as the absence of the "berry" on the beak of this species did not 

 escape Browne's observation, and he refers to it in the eighth letter to 

 Merrett, who in his second letter to Browne remarks "the difference in 

 the elk's bill by you signified is remarkable to distinguish it from others 

 of its kind," indicating that this distinction was previously unknown 

 to him. 



^ As a. rule the Gannet does not approach the shore, except to breed, 

 but follows the shoals of fish far out at sea. The circumstance mentioned by 

 Browne is by no means singular, and several such instances of storm-driven 

 Gannets being captured far inland are recorded. The " Scotch Goose, 

 Anser scoticus" mentioned further on (p. 13 infra), is also in all probability 

 intended for the Gannet ; it is the Anser Bassanus sive Scoticus of 

 Jonston. The "Marshland" here mentioned is a, tract of country 

 reclaimed in ancient times from the sea, lying to the west of the town of 

 Lynn, of some S7,ooo acres in extent, and bordering upon the estuary of 

 the Wash. 



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