338 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
curtseyed on the rocks in the rapid eddies of the north-country 
Streams. 
When young Turner at length awoke to realize the possi- 
bilities of life, and yearned to secure a college education, he 
found his path to success barred by the poor circumstances of 
his family. Happily, an exhibition placed at his disposal by 
Lord Wentworth smoothed the difficulties of the poor scholar. 
In due course he became a member of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. 
There he studied with Ridley and other men who afterwards 
became famous in history, and there he took his degree in 1529- 
1530, being also elected a fellow of his college in the latter year. 
His cotemporary naturalist, John Caius, was about twenty-three 
when he was elected to a fellowship at Gonville Hall. If we 
venture to conjecture that Turner obtained his fellowship about 
the same age, it would appear that he was born about the year 
1507, i.e. during the last years of Henry VII. He spent the 
next ten years of his life as a Cambridge don, acting latterly as 
senior treasurer of his college. As he constantly resided within 
easy reach of the then undrained fens, in which Savi’s Warbler 
(Locustella luscinoides) reeled to its brooding mate among the 
forests of reeds, it is not surprising that he acquired an intimate 
knowledge of the habits of British wildfowl. Did he seek to 
traverse the quaking bogs in quest of some rare flower which was 
needed for his herbarium? Why, then, the Black-tailed Godwit 
(Limosa belgica) yelped round the track of the venturesome 
naturalist. Had he occasion to search for water-plants in the 
ponds of the district ? Why, then, his intrusion into a region of 
watery waste must of course be resented by the clouds of Black 
Terns (Hydrochelidon nigra), which filled the air above their 
breeding colonies with deafening clamour as they hovered about 
their eggs, or swept hither and thither in tumultuous confusion. 
But Turner must have enjoyed his greatest triumph when he 
visited the wild Cranes (Grus communis) that then returned 
annually to breed among the fens. His interest in these fine 
birds must have been very great, for he took pains to find the 
young Cranes in many seasons. (This we know from the 
emphatic language which Turner himself employed on purpose — 
to confute the assertion then current that the Crane did not 
breed in England: ‘‘ Apud Anglos etiam nidulantur grues in locis 
