Introckoction. 1 1 



"beefsteak birds/' from a fancied resemblance of the breaat-cutj when 

 cooked as a beefsteak, to that coveted article of diet in the depths of the 

 " mofussil." 



It will doubtless have been remarked that Mr. Hume suggests that tha 

 cranes upon which our ancestors feasted arrived in this country about tha 

 time of wheat-harvest ; whereas there is amply sufficient evidence of thein 

 having bred regularly in the fenny counties of England. {Vide Yarrell's 

 " History of British Birds," and Stevenson's " Birds of Norfolk," vol. ii., 

 pp. 125, et seqq.) Sir Thomas Brown {circa 1667), however, asserts that 

 " cranes are often seen here in hard winters, especially about the champian 

 and fenny parts." There must surely be some mistake about these birds 

 appearing in England as winter visitants ! Within less than a century 

 ago, as I learn from Mr. Cordeaux's work on the " Birds of the 

 Humber District" (p. 100), by the Fen laws, passed at the "court view 

 of free pledges and court-leet of the Bast, West, and North Pens, with 

 their members, held at Kevesby, 19 th October, 1780," it was decreed that 

 " no person shall bring up or take any swan's eggs, or crane's eggs, or 

 young birds of that kind, on pain of forfeiting for every offence 3s. 4cZ." 

 This edict, remarks Mr. Cordeaux, looks very much like shutting the stable 

 door after the horse was stolen. " It appears somewhat singular," he adds, 

 " after the evidence of Willughby, and the antiquarian Gough, that cranes 

 should have nested in the fens so late as the end of the eighteenth century, 

 just previous to the drainage and inclosure of the West Fen!" On this 

 subject I refer the reader to the work of Mr. Cordeaux. 



I recognise only two genera of Gruidce, Balea/rica and Grus, which 

 appear to me to be sufficiently distinguished from each other. Balearica 

 is African, with two species respectively inhabiting west and south 

 (considered by Buffon and others to be male and female of the same, 

 species), and which are popularly known as the crowned cranes, in' 

 reference to their very extraordinary sort of crest. Of the restricted 

 genus Grus four species have the tertiary plumes elongated and drooping, 

 and two of these are peculiar to Africa ; another being common to Africa 

 and Asia, besides visiting and breeding in parts of the south-east of 

 Europe; while the fourth species so characterised is the white-naped crane 

 {G. leucauchen) of Japan, in which the tertiaries are considerably more 

 elongated than in any that follow (as shown in the engraving of this, 

 species), while its style of coloration approximates that of the Wattled 

 Crane {G. carunculata) of South Africa j both of these latter species beings 

 akin to the Saras group, and in fact belonging to it ; as does likewise the 

 Asiatic White Crane, all of which Saras group have the tertiaries incapable of, 

 being raised at will, or at most to a very slight extent^ The rest, consisting! 

 of at least six species, are of the same sub-type as the common European 

 Crane, and, like it, have the tertiaries very broad, with open and discomposed 



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