WILLIAM TURNER. 339 
palustribus, et earum pipiones sepissime vidi, quod quidam extra 
Angliam nati falsum esse contendunt.’’) | 
But Turner does not appear to have confined his field work 
to the neighbourhood of Cambridge. If he was eager to watch 
the Marsh Harrier or “ Balbushard” (Cinclus eruginosus) quar- 
tering the marshes of Ely in quest of Duck or Coot, assuredly 
he was no less pleased to visit the Cormorants which nested on 
the lofty trees also occupied by a Norfolk Hernery. 
But Turner was a man of strong religious convictions, and he 
lived in times which encouraged strife. Good naturalist as he 
was, he allowed his better judgment to be overpowered by 
sectarian bitterness, and for a time he lost his liberty. Released 
from prison, probably about 1542, he wisely went abroad, and 
occupied himself with his favourite hobbies. His continental 
travels enabled him to become acquainted with the habits of the 
White Stork (Ciconta alba), the Hoopoe (Upupa epops), and 
other birds which he had never met with in England. The 
pleasure which he derived from his wanderings must have been 
immense. F'or example, when he climbed the Alps, be became 
aware for the first time of the existence of a species which he 
had never heard of before—the European Nutcracker (Nucifraga 
caryocatactes). ‘To us the bird would be simply an old favourite, 
whose undulating flight recalled many happy hours spent amidst 
glorious pine forests; but to Turner it was a revelation, a form 
such as he had never contemplated,—its flight strange to his eye, 
its note weird, its coloration unique in his experience. Then, 
too, there was the curious fact that (as the Swiss peasants assured 
him), it did not feed upon grain or carrion like the Rooks and 
Crows of his own country, but it depended upon the harvest of 
nuts which the coppices of the wooded valleys supplied, reminding 
him of the little blue Nuthatches, or ‘“ Nut-jobbers,” as the 
country-folk called them (Sitta cesia), the birds whose shrill 
notes and lively actions had so often cheered him when strolling 
through the Cambridge gardens. Turner travelled into Italy, 
and even attended the botanical lectures of Lucas Ghinus at 
Bologna before he journeyed to Zurich, the home of Conrad 
Gesner. The meeting between the two great naturalists must 
have possessed many interesting features, and there can be no 
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