152 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
life. Nor must we fail to mention that a salve, most valuable 
for many a disease, is made by Scots from the fat of this 
Goose, for it is wonderfully full of fat. ee 
Mr. W. H. Mullens, the author of a very good memoir of 
Turner, to be consulted with advantage,* is of opinion that 
he owed something to Bartholomeus Anglicus. The ‘ De 
Proprietatibus Rerum ” of this writer is stated by Mr. Mullens, 
in his ‘‘ Bibliography of British Ornithology,” to have been 
probably written between 1248 and 1267,f but in any 
case it does not detract from the merits of the scholarly 
Northumbrian, if he did use it. 
The Rev. H. A. Macpherson, who has written with 
justifiable enthusiasm about Turner, conjectures that he was 
thirty-seven when the “ Avium Praecipuarum . . . historia ”’ 
was printed ;t but as Mr. Mullens finds that he graduated in 
1529-30, he possibly was not so old as that. It may have been, 
as both Mullens and Macpherson suggest, the proximity of 
the Cambridgeshire fens which directed Turner’s attention to 
birds, during his ten years’ residence at the university, where he 
had already brought out a book on botany.§ Be that as it may, 
the result was the invaluable “ Avium Praccipuarum,” which 
predates the “ Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux ”’ of Pierre 
Belon and the great work of Conrad Gesner. With Gesner, 
Turner was in close friendship, and much mutual assistance 
these two men rendered to one another; indeed, Gesner quotes 
nearly every observation which Turner has made. 
From our point of view, by far the most important part 
of the “‘ Avium Praecipuarum ” is not that which comments 
on Aristotle and Pliny, though Turner meant it to be so, but 
his own personal observations on birds. Many of these 
may have been made on preaching tours in the east of 
England, as for example where he notes that Cormorants 
breed in Heronries in Norfolk. It is difficult to say how 
* “ British Birds,’’ Mag., II., p. 5. The series communicated by Mr. 
Mullens, comprises lives of Turner, Carew, Merrett, Martin, Plot, Pennant, 
Ray, Willughby, Bewick, Montagu, Macgillivray, Yarrell, Tradescant, 
Charleton, Muffett and Sibbald. It is to be hoped that these valuable articles 
will be continued. 
+ ‘ Bib. B.O.,” p. 45. 
t “ Zoologist,” 1898, p. 337. 
§ The “ Libellus de re herbaria novus,’”’ of which an excellent reprint 
was issued by Mr. B. D. Jackson in 1877. 
