CRANES AT CHRISTMAS 317 



eastern counties ; and for some time after the pass- 

 ing of the Wildfowl Act of 1 534 these birds seemed 

 to have held their ground in East Anglia. Turner, 

 in his Historia Avium, printed in 1548, tells us 

 that he himself had often seen the young ones, 

 presumably in the fens near Cambridge, where, as 

 we learn from Cooper's Athencs Cantabrigienses, he 

 was educated, and lived for about fifteen years. 



In a list of fen-birds forwarded as presents by 

 Mr Balam, "out of marshland in Norfolk," on the 

 occasion of the wedding of the daughter of Mr 

 Moor, of Losely, in 1567 (printed in vol. xxxvi. of 

 the Archcsologia) we find "Cranes ix."; and that this 

 name was not intended to refer to the Heron (as it 

 does in many parts of the country at the present day, 

 especially in Wales and Ireland), is evident from 

 the circumstance that, in the same list, the latter 

 bird is also particularly mentioned — " Hernshawes 

 v." Dr Thomas Muffett, who lived in Wiltshire, at 

 Bulbridge, near Wilton, where he died in 1590, 

 wrote a curious little book entitled. Health's Improve- 

 ment, wherein he set down the results of various 

 experiments which he made on the gastronomic 

 properties of the flesh of different kinds of game 

 and wildfowl which were found in England in his 

 day, and which he had tasted, adding at the same 

 time brief remarks on the haunts in which they were 

 to be found. He testifies to the fact that "Cranes 

 breed (as old Dr Turner writ unto Gesner) not 

 only in the northern countreys, but also in our 

 English fens." He adds : " Pliny saith that in 

 Italy they feed much upon grapes ; but with us they 



