FIFTEENTH CENTURY 77 
Botoner is to be credited.* In August 1478, Botoner visited 
several islands, of one of which he writes: ‘“‘ Pentybers rock, 
a very great crag, situated on the western side of the Severn 
water, tour miles distant from the harbour of Padstow, and 
the castle of Tintagel, and one mile from the shore, 
and there nest birds called ganets, gulls, sea-mews, and 
other sea birds” (Translation). 
Although there is no evidence of a change of name, and 
the words “ very great crag” are hardly applicable, it seems 
almost certain that this Pentybers can be none other than a 
rock which now goes by the name of Gulland, which lies at 
no great distance from Pentyr Point. In both cases the 
meaning of “ Pen” is a head or headland. Botoner has not 
much to say of animal life on other islands, but he alludes 
to the Puffins at Scilly, where they seem to have been an 
article of food ; to the snakes on Priestholm in North Wales ; 
and to Cormorants and Seamews on “‘ Lastydenale in Walia.” 
Mr. O. V. Aplin, in writing of Botoner} has identified this 
last named with St. Tudwal’s Island on the Carnarvon coast, 
and no doubt rightly. 
British Birds in the Fifteenth Century.—Leaving poets 
and Solan Geese for the present, let us see what there is 
available, which is bevond mere conjecture, about British 
birds generally, to which we can turn for information. As a 
matter of fact there is very little; it would be much easier to 
collect information about the sixteenth century than about 
the fifteenth, where only some scattered items bearing directly 
on Natural History are discoverable. What there is, has been 
to some extent sifted by Mr. W. Denton in his ‘“ England 
in the Fifteenth Century,” where this author cites various 
curious passages, one of which referring to some old Trevelyan 
Paperst may be worth quoting as a fair sample of the times. 
In 1532 a certain tenant of Nettlecomb in Somerset was 
indicted by one John Trevelyan for sundry infractions of his 
covenant in respect of the holding of the estate and 
manor ; several things were alleged against him, viz., that he 
* Ttinerarium sive Liber Rerum Memorabilium.” In another place 
Botoner alludes to the island of Grasholm, but says nothing about any 
Gannets being there. 
+ ‘Zoologist,”’ 1915, p. 68. 
+ Which have been printed for the Camden Society (1857). 
