MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON THE BREEDING OP THE CRANE. 165 
On the 27th November, 1563, John Repps writes from ‘Walpole 
in Marshland,’ to Bassingbourn Gawdy,* stating that he “ sends 
a Crane with two Mallards, which is all the fowl they can get, it 
is so scarce,” and adds by way of excuse that, owing to the late 
storm breaking their banks, the “fowlers have no leisure to lay for 
fowl,” which may in a measure account for the apparent scarcity, 
for on the 3rd of November, 1567, Mr. Balam was able to send 
nine Cranes, with many other wild birds, out of Marshland in 
Norfolk, as a wedding present to a lady in Sussex, showing that 
wild-fowl must still have been numerous in that locality.! 
Dr. Muffet in his ‘ Health’s Improvement,’ probably writing 
about tho year 1595, damns with faint praise the flesh of the 
Crane even when young, but when adult, stigmatises it as “ hard, 
tough, gross, and sinewy.” 
Michael Drayton in his wonderful description of tho Lincolnshire 
• Fens, to bo found in the 25th Song of his Poly-olbion, published in 
1622, but probably written about the year 1598, dismisses the 
Crane with one line, but that full of poetic vigour : — 
“ There stalks the stately Crane, as though he marched in war,” 
showing that this noble bird was no stranger to him. 
In June of the year 1663, the Mayor of Norwich entertained the 
Duke of Norfolk and the Hon. Henry Howard, and it was probably 
to that occasion which Sir Thomas Browne refers, when he makes 
the oft-repeated and as often mis-quoted statement, “ I meet [not 
met] with Cranes in a dish,” and adds, that although often seen 
here in hard winters they seem to have been more plentiful. 
Willughby, in his ‘ Ornithologia ’ in 1678, states that at that 
time the Crane still came “ often into England, and in the fen 
countries, in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, there are great 
flocks of them,” but whether his information was of the latest 
I think seems rather doubtful, for although Ray repeats the 
statement in the Synopsis avium (1713), Pennant in the Appendix 
to his ‘ British Zoology ’ (1768), with reference to this, remarks, “on 
the strictest enquiry we learn, that at present the inhabitants of 
those counties are entirely unacquainted with them ; we therefore 
* Vide Hist. Manuscript Com. Report on MSS. of the Family of Gawdy, 
p. 5 ; and Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Nat. Soc. vol. vi. p. 249. 
t * Arehaeologia,’ vol. xxxvi. p. 36. 
M 2 
