20 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
This is an exceedingly interesting passage, for it gives us 
the names of four birds, all mentioned for the first time as 
British. If the Huzlpe could be identified, it would make 
five: Professor W. Skeat considered it agreed that it was a 
bird of some sort.* 
Possibly it was the Whaup or Curlew, but what ‘was 
meant by the sfearn or Starling is obscure. It is hardly likely 
to have been the bird which we call a Starling now.f 
A third mention of the Gannet occurs in the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, and a fcurth in an Anglo-Saxon rune: 
“ Oak is on earth 
to the sons of men 
food of the flesh, 
often he goeth 
over the ganet’s bath.” { 
In an A.S. metrical psalm there is a fifth allusion— 
“fuglas comon of garseoge, ganetes fleogan ’’—“‘ there came 
birds of the ocean, Gannets flew.” 
The only other item which calls for quotation, is a vague 
one, coming as before from the Saxon Chronicle: “ a.p. 671. 
This year happened that great destruction among the fowls ” 
—how, or from what cause, the writer does not tell us. 
Here I may be pardoned for observing that the earliest 
printed translation of the Saxon Chronicle was undertaken 
by a member of my family—Anna Gurney, of Northrepps, 
and completed in 1819.§ 
Eighth and Ninth Centuries. 
Birds known to the Later Saxons—Two hundred years 
of residence in England could not be altogether without 
* “Notes on English Etymology,” 1907, p. 6. 
+ See Aslfric’s Glossary in Somner’s A.S. Dictionary. The Rev. F. C. R. 
Jourdain thinks it was the Tern, a suggestion which has been before made. 
The Saxon word in the orginal is Stern, and that is very similar to Starn, 
which is a provincialism still in use for Terns: Ster is given for a Starling 
in Bosworth’s A.S. Dictionary. 
t “ Archaeologia,”’ 1840, p. 344, J, M. Kemble, 
§ The collection of Teutonic and etymological books formed by thig 
learned lady is preserved in the Norfolk and Norwich Library: an obituary 
of her by Mrs, Austin appeared in the ‘‘ Gentleman’s Magazine ”’ for Septem- 
ber 1857. 
