The Crane. 45 



1780, that no person shall take Crane's eggs or young birds under a penalty of 

 three shillings and fourpence, an edict which, as Mr. Cordeaux remarks, looks 

 very much like shutting the stable door after the horse was stolen. At the 

 present time it is only occasional migrants that are shot in this country. One 

 was killed in the Scilly Islands in 1881, another at Spalding in 1882. In 

 December, 1889, a specimen was shot on the coast of the Bristol Channel. This 

 specimen was carefully examined and mounted by Mr. Bidgood, of the Taunton 

 Museum. Its weight was thirteen pounds, and its length, from the bill to the 

 extreme tail, four feet, and the expanse of the wings seven feet. The bird was 

 shot while feeding. Its food consisted of beans with a few field snails. 



That the Crane would visit this country on its migration, if not persecuted, is 

 evident from the fact that Lord Lilford states : — 



" I have a most distinct recollection of having, when a child, seen two immense 

 birds flying over Hyde Park corner, which filled me with astonishment and 

 curiosity ; and it was not till some fifteen years later, when in Spain, I saw 

 Cranes on the wing that I was able to identify, without the slightest doubt, the 

 birds that had so much excited my youthful mind. Throughout the south of 

 Europe, at the season of migration, long strings of Cranes may be often seen, 

 and still more often heard, passing high in air, and in February and March the 

 great plains to the south of Seville may generally be correctly called full of them. 

 A few pairs remain to breed in Andalucia, but the principal breeding quarters of 

 the Crane in Europe are the great morasses of the far north." Lord Lilford 

 adds : — " In my opinion the flesh of a young Crane is most excellent, and an old 

 one may be made into very good provend by skilled culinary treatment. In cap- 

 tivity our bird is delightful from its tameness and the quaint antics and attitudes 

 that it assumes, and its loud trumpet-like cries are by no means unpleasant. If 

 one of a captive pair of Cranes dies, the distress of the survivor is most touching 

 to witness, and from my own experience of many birds in confinement, I am 

 inclined to attribute the palm of affectionate social instinct to the present species." 



" In the Holy Land," writes Canon Tristram, " the Crane is well known, and 

 is, next to the Ostrich, the largest bird in the country. It only visits the 

 cultivated region at the time of its spring migration, when a few pairs remain in 

 the marshy plains, as by the waters of Merom, but the greater number pass 

 onwards to the north. In the southern wilderness, south of Beersheba, it resorts 

 in immense flocks to certain favourite roosting-places during winter. The clouds 

 of these enormous birds, four feet high and many eight feet from wing to wing, 

 quite darkened the air towards evening. Their roosting-place was marked like 

 some resort of sea-fowl — a gently sloping isolated knoll, where no ambush was 



