THIRTEENTH CENTURY 59 
The visits of the Crossbill to England have always been 
somewhat mysterious and are not regulated by the laws 
which govern the majority of migratory birds. Sometimes 
for many years they are rare or altogether unseen, and then 
comes a large invasion, which lasts or dies away, according 
to the food supply to be found. Seeds of the Scotch fir are 
their natural diet, but occasionally apples are attacked, chiefly 
for the sake of the pip. 
“In the course of this year’ [1251], writes the chronicler, 
“about the fruit-season there appeared, in the orchards 
chiefly, some remarkable birds which had never before been 
seen in England, somewhat larger than Larks, which ate the 
kernel of the fruit and nothing else, whereby the trees were 
fruitless, to the loss of many. The beaks of these birds were 
crossed... .” The original manuscript, which contains a rude 
drawing of the Crossbill, was examined by Professor Newton 
at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where it is preserved. 
Matthew Paris was not a naturalist, but incidentally he 
gives us three or four other items of zoology of about this date 
—Woods were to be kept free from wolves, which were far 
from being extinct in England— Buffaloes (?) were brought to 
England in 1252—a Sea-Monster, not of the Whale kind, was 
washed up in the diocese of Norwich in 1255—in the same 
year the first Elephant was brought to England, having been 
presented to Henry III. by Lewis, King of France. About 
the same time also the King had a White Bear sent him from 
Norway. 
Other marvels of the thirteenth century were hailstones 
“as gret as an ey ”* which fell in 1203, in which year were 
also seen fowls flying in the air, bringing in their Wills burning 
coals, which burned many houses in London.t This story 
possibly has its origin in the mischievous habits of the 
Jackdaw. 
The Solan Goose. Translation of an Extent or Inventory 
of Produce in the Reign of Edward I. (1274).—Turning now 
to the Solan Goose, it is to Sir T. Duffus Hardy that we are 
indebted for disinterring a thirteenth-century record of a 
* Professor Bensly, to whose assistance I am much indebted, suggests 
that “ey” should read “ egg.” 
+ ‘A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483,” p. 5. 
