168 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
they quickly learnt to use their legs, could be sometimes caught. 
Such as did not fall victims in one way or another, before long 
found themselves too much harried to remain in England, 
and accordingly when the migratory season came round, 
experience taught the survivors not to return. Quickly, then, 
the Crane’s loud trumpet, which was to the peasants of that 
wide marshland tract, which included the ‘‘ Great Bedford 
Level,” one of the heralds of spring, ceased to be heard. But 
the remembrance of the stately Crane, as the poet Drayton 
aptly terms it, could not fade away from their minds. Its 
memory remained, and it is significant of this that there 
were, long afterwards, taverns to be seen which exposed a 
signboard bearing as an emblem—The Three Cranes.* The 
actual date at which the Crane left off breeding in the British 
Isles can never be fixed, but that it had entirely ceased to do 
so before 1700 there is every reason to believe ; yet it is true 
there are some Lincolnshire Fen laws, which Pishey Thompson 
cites in his “‘ Boston and The Hundred of Skirbeck ”’ (p. 368), 
which protected the eggs of Swans and Cranes as recently 
as 1780. 
The Crane as a Winter and Spring Visitant.—Putting 
the question of breeding aside for the present, we come 
next to the second phase of the Crane’s history, viz., 
its status in Britain as a winter and spring visitant, but 
apparently less common in autumn: this phase of its career 
may be judged to have exceeded a century, roughly from 
1650 to 1750. After that the Crane seems to have bequeathed 
its name to the Heron, which was the bird that it most 
resembled,t and to have become, what it is at the present 
* Larwood and Hotten particularly allude to a house of that name in 
Thames Street, London, which was known and frequented in the sixteenth 
century (‘‘ History of Signboards,” p. 204). See also Harben's "' Dictionary 
of London ”’ (pp. 495, 577); at the present time there are, according to 
Harben, four Crane courts in the Metropolis, including the court in Fleet 
Street, which was burnt in the great conflagration of 1666. 
{ Mr. Swann is of opinion that ‘The numerous place-names derived 
from Crane refer obviously in most cases to the Heron ”’ (‘‘ Dictionary of English 
and Folk-names,” p. 62). Thus Cranshaws Castle in Berwickshire may have 
earned its name from the young Herons which were to be had there, then 
perhaps known to the country people as Craneseughs or Craneshaws, but 
“shaw ”’ also sometimes means a wood. In Norfolk we have Cranwick 
parish and Cranworth, the prefix in both cases being Anglo-Saxon (see 
Munford’s ‘“ Derivation of the Names of Towns and Villages,’”’ p. 90), so in 
this case, the names are more likely to have reference to Cranes than to Herons. 
