STATUS OF THE SPOONBILL 179 
of the Spoonbill, whereby no loophole was left for an offender 
to escape his fine. 
In William Harrison's list of birds in 1577 (supra, p. 162) 
we get a slightly different spelling—Pawper. Harrison 
says: “As for egrets, pawpers, and such like, they are 
dailie brought unto us from beyond the sea, as if all the 
toule of our countrie could not suffice to satisfie our delicate 
appetites.’* Two other spellings in old MSS., both of the 
fifteenth century, have been discovered by Mr. John Hodgkin, 
as I learn from Mr. Mullens. From a list of carvers’ terms 
he quotes the expression ‘‘ Papyr ys lowryde [lurid],” while 
in the menu of a feast at the wedding of the Earl of Devonshire, 
he finds the word ‘“‘ Poper,’’ which comes next to “ Mawlard 
de la Ryuer.” Mr. Hodgkin suggests that the Goose is the 
bird here alluded to, in support of which he refers to the 
Italian name of ‘‘ Papero,” for a green goose, or a gosling. 
(* Notes and Queries,’ March 18th, 1911, p. 216. Reference 
suppled by Mr. Mullens.) In the passage quoted, it hardly 
seems from the context as if the Goose could have been 
intended. <A third variation of the name spelled ‘‘ Popard ”’ 
(1413) is cited in “The New English Dictionary,’ but the 
editors refrain from attributing it to any particular species. 
To see how various the spellings of birds’ names were, 
one has only to turn to the ‘* Promptorium Parvulorum,” an 
English-Latin Dictionary of the fifteenth century.t Here we 
have the spellings popler, popelere and poplerd, as well as 
schovelerd, schoveler, scholarde and schoues bec, while in the 
nearly contemporary “‘ Boke of Nurture” (1452) the latter 
name is written shovellewre and shovelere, which half a century 
later the poet Drayton (1613){ abbreviates to shouler. In 
the “ Fantasticks’ of Nicholas Breton (1626) there is the 
further alteration to shoulard. 
As regards the derivation of the name Popelar or Popler, 
Professor Newton pronounces it to be a corruption of Lopeler, 
—1t.e., Lepelar Dutch, Lepler German, with which Mr. Harting 
agrees.§ The word means a spoon or a shovel, and bears 
* « Holinshed’s Chronicles,’? Bk. IIf., ch. II. 
+ Said to have been composed about 1440 by a friar of King’s Lynn. 
t In Song XXV., line 353, of the “ Poly-Olbion.”’ 
§ See Stevenson’s ‘‘ Birds of Norfolk,” Vol. III., p. 135, and ‘‘ Handbook 
of British Birds,’’ 2nd ed., p. 210. 
