158 PROFESSOR NEWTON ON SOME CRANES’ BONES FOUND IN NORFOLK. 
Y. 
ON SOME CRANES’ BONES FOUND IN NORFOLK. 
By Professor Newton, F.R.S. 
Read 29th January, 1901. 
In August last when this Society honoured Cambridge by a third 
visit, Mr. Southwell brought with him, and left in my charge, 
three bones belonging to the Norwich Museum and attributed to 
the Crane ( Grus communis ), asking me to compare them with 
specimens in the University Museum of Zoology, and to communi- 
cate the result to the Society. I need scarcely say that I willingly 
undertook so grateful a duty, and now comply with the request of 
my old and valued friend. 
I understand that these bones had long been in the Gunn 
Collection of the Norfolk and Norwich Museum, and that, though 
their history has not been recorded, they were found in excavating 
the Alexandra Dock at Kings Lynn, between the years 1867 — 1869. 
Their dark colour shows that they have been imbedded in peat, 
but there is nothing to indicate their antiquity. There is no doubt 
of their having been rightly assigned, and they are two right 
tibice — neither having the epicnemial process perfect — and the 
greater part of a right radius, of which the distal extremity has 
been broken off. The two tibiae differ remarkably in size, the 
length of the smaller one, from one articular surface to the other, 
being only 10T inches, while that of the larger, measured in the 
same way, is as nearly as possible 12 inches — the longest specimens 
in our Museum (Burwell Fen, 1897, Reg. No. 344 BA) measuring 
from the same surfaces 12-25 inches, and another (Burwell Fen, 
1876, Reg. No. 344 C) 11 ‘25 inches. I had long been aware of 
the difference of size observable in ancient English Cranes’ bones, 
and I had set it down to difference of sex ; but I was hardly 
