158 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
The Morinellus (Dotterel). 
Puphin or Pufin (Puffin) and Cormorant. 
The Spermologus or Frugilega (Rook). 
The Sacropsittacus (Parrot). 
White Ravens (two in Cumberland, August, 1548). 
It has been thought that this tract, which can hardly be 
all that Kay wrote about birds, was part of a longer treatise 
intended as a contribution to Gesner’s “‘ Historia Animalium,”’ 
but that, in consequence of Gesner’s early death, it was never 
communicated. 
Conrad Gesner and the Solan Goose.—In passing under 
review some of the early classics of ornithology, we take note 
that the Solan Goose is not described by Eber and Peucer 
(1549), nor by Pierre Belon (1555), nor is it given a place by 
that great authority on gastronomy, Dr. Mutfett, or Moffett 
(? 1595). Accordingly we must turn, as in many other 
instances, to Conrad Gesner (1555). Gesner was a Swiss 
physician, a man of the highest erudition, a great seeker after 
knowledge, and the friend of William Turner. There must 
have been much in common between Gesner and Turner, 
both of whom died in middle age, the former being no more 
than forty-eight and the latter only fifty-six. So highly 
was Turner's knowledge esteemed by Gesner that, as Mr. 
Evans shows, he was continually quoting some of his 
observations, ¢.g., his notes about the Brent and Barnacle 
Geese, the Nightjar, the Night Heron, and the Pelican. In 
the famous “ Historia Animalium ’”—the ornithological part 
of which* came out in 1555, only a year before its author 
died—Gesner includes the Solan Goose, but, adhering for 
the most part to an inconvenient alphabetical arrangement, 
he puts it after the true Geese, and before the Bustard, which 
here bears the name “ Gustarda,” also used by Boece. After 
quoting William Turner, Gesner continues :—(T'ranslation.) 
“T lately received from a learned Scot those Geese called 
Solendgens which are longer than tame ones, but not so 
broad: they lay their eggs on rocks: and with one foot 
placed upon them (whence perchance the name from solea, 
that is, the sole of the foot, and the Germans also so name 
them) at length hatch them. Plenty of them are taken at 
* Liber ITI., ‘‘ De Avium Natura.”’ 
