FIFTEENTH CENTURY 83 
favour, which recites that no person other than the son of 
the King, or a substantial freeholder, could possess a Swan- 
mark. As this was the case, perhaps these Thames swans 
were mostly Crown property. That they were maintained 
in full strength until the succeeding century is shown by the 
observations of a traveller, the Duke de Najera, who visited 
England in 1543-4, who, referring to the Thames, says: 
“Never did I see a river so thickly covered with swans as 
this.’* Another writer, who was an Italian bishop, Paul Jovius, 
about the same time also alludes to them in his description of 
Britain. That the King was accustomed to maintain swan- 
herds, who were responsible for the birds, on other rivers besides 
the Thames, is certain, and he had also the prerogative right 
of seizing his subject’s swans, if they were not marked. 
Birds seen by Vergil.—Another Italian, Polydore Vergil,t 
who visited England four years later, also remarks on the 
Swans upon lakes and rivers, but says nothing about Kites. 
What Vergil seems to have been most struck with were the 
Kentish hens and the delicacy of young grass-fed Geese. 
“Of wilde burdes these are most delicate, partriches, 
phesaunts, quayles, owsels, thrusshes, and larckes.” Of the 
Skylark he remarks, “‘ This laste burde in winter season, the 
wether not being to owtragios, dothe waxe wonderus fatte, 
at which time a wonderfull nombre of them is caughte. . . .” 
Like Capello, Vergil marvelled at the Crows, Rooks and 
Jackdaws, which he had not been accustomed to see so 
numerous in Italy: ‘‘ Crowes and chowghes [Jackdaws] are 
everie daye in the morning earlie harde clattering in theire 
kinde. In noe cuntrie is there a greater multitude of crowse ; 
being soe harmefull a kinde of birdes, yet are thie spared in 
that lande, bie cause thei eate woormes and other vermin...” 
He also gives another reason why Crows and Rooks were 
spared, and that was because Herons were wont to build in 
their old and disused nests, and Herons were of prime 
importance for Hawking.t 
* “ Archaeologia,” XXIII., p. 355 (trans.). 
+ ‘Polydore Vergil’s English History,” translation, printed for the 
Camden Society, 1846, p. 23. 
+ This supposed habit of the Heron, on which Ray cast doubts (‘‘ The 
Ornithology,” p. 278), has met with no confirmation by modern observers, 
nor does it seem likely that it is founded on fact. 
