158 
MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN HENRY OURNE1’. 
shews the date of his first visit to Ryder-street, St. James'", 
where Yarrell lived. He afterwards sent Yarrell the Red-winged 
Starling, shot at Barton, from which the illustration in the ‘ British 
Birds ’ was taken ; and notes of many other Norfolk rarities. At 
the age of seventeen he returned to Norwich, to commence business 
life in the bank in which his father was a partner. 
In 1838 Mr. Gurney began to keep a Natural History Journal, 
in conjunction with J. G. Barclay, T. F. Buxton, and the late 
Charles Buxton : this volume is full of interesting notes, and none 
more so than his own, which are chiefly about birds. Perhaps the 
most important is one on the last Norfolk Bustard (killed near 
Swaffham in 1838) which he saw in the flesh when it was sent up 
to Norwich. Although his father was too strict a Quaker to allow 
him to handle a gun, he used to get Bright, the Earlham gardener, 
to shoot for him, and formed a collection of flat bird-skins, which 
were sewn into a large book with canvas leaves. His son, Mr. 
J. H. Gurney, tells me he has never seen this ornithological relic, 
but believes that not many years ago it was in existence. He 
also commenced a natural history collection when he was about 
ten years of age ; and a list drawn up by himself, soon afterwards, 
enumerates sixty-one specimens at Earlham. This boy’s collection 
was stuffed for him by Butcher, Hall, and Hunt, professionals, all of 
whom, except the last, have now sunk into oblivion. It consisted 
of Stoats, Owls, Thrushes, &c., but there were some rare birds, as 
three Smews, a Fulmar Petrel, and a Red-necked Phalarope, the 
latter shot at Weybourne by his uncle Sir Fowell Buxton. In 
1838 he notes that he had already examined about twenty Norfolk- 
killed Sea Eagles, and I have reason to believe that he was the 
friend alluded to by Lubbock (‘Fauna,’ 2nd edit., p. 19), whose 
observations on the migration of this species he quotes, and from 
whom he says he has often derived information. On one of his 
rambles he suddenly found himself in the presence of a herd of 
wild Swans, which was a very unexpected apparition in the Earlham 
meadows. This was probably in 1838, in February of which year 
he notes in his journal that between forty and fifty of these birds 
were brought into Norwich. Colonel Hawker records their 
abundance in the same year. On another occasion he met with a 
flock of Cormorants by the Earlham bridge, one of which Bright 
shot, and Hunt stuffed for him. 
