SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 217 
tudes till one comes close up to them, because they are not 
wont to be scared or disturbed. The young ones are esteemed 
a choice dish in Scotland, and sold very dear (1s. 8d. plucked). 
We eat of themat Dunbar. They are in bigness little inferior 
to an ordinary goose. The young one is upon the back black, 
and speckled with little white spots, under the breast and 
the belly gray. The beak is sharp-pointed, the mouth very 
wide and large, the tongue very small, the eyes great, the 
foot hath four toes webbed together. It feeds upon mackerel 
and herring, and the flesh of the young one smells and tastes 
strong of these fish...” Besides this narrative, of which 
the whole is not here quoted, we have a very excellent account 
of the Solan Goose in “The Ornithology,’ to be found in 
the Latin edition at pages 247, 265, and inthe English edition 
at pp. 328 and 348. Here, as well as in Ray’s earlier ‘ Cata- 
logue of English Birds” in 1674,* it is spelled Soland Goose, 
which is the Lowland Scotch way of writing it.t 
This journey ended on September 7th, on which day 
they returned to Cambridge, and the week after Ray writes 
to Willughby an account of the plants he had observed,{ 
but says nothing of birds. 
Ruy’s Third Itinerary. May, June, July, 1662.—On May 
8th, 1662, Ray and Willughby, starting from Cambridge, 
evidently on horseback, saw the sheep fair at St. Neots, and 
passed on thence to Northampton and Rugby. On the 12th 
and 13th they noted sundry plants, and on the 14th, continues 
the diary, ‘‘ We diverted out of our Way to see the Putts, which 
we judged to bea sort of Lari, in a Meere at Norbury belonging 
to Col. Skrimshaw. They build altogether in an islet in the 
middle of a pool. Each hen layeth three or four eggs of a 
dirty blue or sea-green, spotted with black; at the driving 
every year, they take commonly above an hundred dozen 
young, which they sell at five shillings the dozen.’’§ 
This settlement is also described in “‘ The Ornithology ” 
(p. 347), and afterwards at greater length, in Robert Plot’s 
“Natural History of Staffordshire’ (1686), with a curious 
* Printed with “ A collection of English Words,” 1674 (pp. 81-96). 
Sixteen variants of Solan are cited in ‘‘ The Gannet,”’ p. 26. 
‘* The Correspondence of John Ray,” p. 3. 
“Select Remains,” p. 216. 
On ae bh 
