10 Monograph of the Cranes. 



Mr. James M'Arthur informed me that a pair which he had kept in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of his house, and which had become perfectly domesticated [i.e., tame], 

 so far attracted the notice of a pair of wild birds as to induce them to settle and feel 

 near the house, and, becoming still tamer, to approach the yard, take food from his 

 hand, and even to follow the domesticated (?) birds into the kitchen, until unfor- 

 tunately, a servant imprudently seizing at one of the wild birds, and tearing a handful 

 of feathers from its back, the wildness of its disposition was roused, and, darting forth, 

 followed by its companion, it mounted in the air, soaring higher and higher at every 

 circle, at the same time uttering its hoarse call, which was responded to by the tame 

 birds below. For several days did they return and perform the same evolutions 

 without alighting, until, the dormant impulses of the tame birds being aroused, they 

 also winged their way to some far distant part of the country, and never returned to 

 the home where they had been so long fostered. 



Where these birds are unmolested and protected, as is the Saras Crane 

 in parts of India, the Common Crane among the Buddhist Kalmuks of 

 Astrakhan, and (if I understand aright) the White-naped Crane in Japan, 

 they scarcely exhibit any wildness or fear of man ; but when persecuted by 

 gunners, or by the setting of nets or other snares for them, they soon 

 become unsurpassably wary and suspicious (as Chesney found the common 

 species to be in Arabia), which argues somewhat favourably for their 

 intelligence. I have seen numbers of netted cranes (6f. communis), two or 

 three dozen of them at a time, together with netted wild geese {Anser 

 cinereus and A. indicus), brought alive for sale to the Calcutta provision 

 bazaar, where I am not aware that the former are ever bought for the 

 table. 



No slight difference of opinion has been, expressed regarding the 

 quality of the flesh of the crane family as a gastronomical delicacy ; but 

 when in fit condition for cooking certain species of them are pretty well 

 unsurpassable. Mr. Hume has very sensibly explained the matter. He 

 remarks that 



In Europe nowadays the common crane is not thought worth eating, and people 

 wonder at our ancestors esteeming them &^ they did ; but the reason of this is obvious. 

 In former days, when they were so numerous in Norfolk and other counties, they used, 

 I apprehend, to arrive [from the fens] at the time of wheat harvest, and feed 

 exclusively on grain. Grain-fed cranes are delicious. The common cranes that have 

 lately left us [in India], and which for two months had been daily gorging themselves 

 in our fields on grain of various kinds, were fat, juicy, tender, and delicately-flavoured 

 — in fact, to my mind, with the exception of a florican {Otis deliciosa), or one of our 

 Norfolk pheasants, about as good birds as can be placed on table ; and this, although five 

 or six months before, when they first arrived, they were stringy, tough, lean things, not 

 worth eating, or shooting even except for plumes : (This, 1868, p. 37.) 



Mr. Ayres writes of the paradise or Stanley crane of South Africa that 

 " these birds feed on seeds and roots " (bulbs ?) " as well as on insects, and 

 their flesh is not at all bad-eating j slices from the breast, fried with butter, 

 are scarcely to be distinguished in taste from excellent beef." (!) In India 

 the white stork [Ciaonia alba), the white-necked stork (0. leucocephala), and 

 sometimes the oriputal white ibis (Ibis melanocephala) are occasionally styled 



