OSTOTA'V. 
49 
William Richard Fisher, Esqrs., one is mentioned as having 
"been seen by them, which was said to have been killed near 
Norwich. One is also recorded by Edward Hearle Rodd, Esq., 
of Trebartha Hall, in the ‘Zoologist,’ page 3277, as having 
been obtained at Trescoe, one of the Scilly Islands, on or 
about the 8th. of October, 1851. One was shot on the 27th. 
of April in the present year, 1852, close to the town of 
Worthing, in Sussex, about a couple of hundred yards from 
the sea. For this information I am indebted to W. F. W. Bird, 
Esq., who had it from Mr. Cooper, of Radnor-Street, London. 
Meyer says of these birds that they prefer the borders of 
woods, hedges, and fields, especially if near water; that they 
also visit gardens, and frequent the banks of rivulets clothed 
with low willows and other bushes, and districts intersected 
with ditches and marshy tracts; and that from their wooded 
retreats they visit the neighbouring fields of stubble, turnips, 
and millet, but are seldom seen in open meadows. He adds 
that they are said to shew themselves but little, in which 
respect they differ from the others of their kind that are 
found in this country, which are all of them remarkable for 
perching in exposed situations, where they are easily visible. 
Great numbers of Ortolans are captured in nets, and pre¬ 
served for the table, being esteemed a great delicacy by the 
foreign ‘gourmands.’ They are kept most easily in captivity, 
and being supplied abundantly with food, pass almost their 
whole time in feeding, so that they unwittingly hasten on 
their destruction by the same means as, although in a different 
way from, some notorious glutton, of whom it was said that 
he committed suicide with his teeth: it would be well if such 
a habit were confined to the birds, and were shared in common 
with them by none who rank higher in the scale of nature. 
Even in the time of the Romans, that is to say, in their 
later times, when their luxuriousness and effeminacy necessi¬ 
tated the destruction of the empire, they too thus committed 
political suicide: the Ortolan was valued on the same account 
that has rendered it an object of quest ever since. 
It is a migratory species, Africa being its winter, and 
Europe its summer residence. Bechstein remarks that its 
migration is so exact and regular, that when one has been 
seen in a particular spot, especially in the spring, it is sure 
to be found there the following year at the same time. This 
is, however, equally the case with many other migratory birds, 
as well as with the one at present before us. The rule is, 
VOL. III. e 
