Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/370

338 curtseyed on the rocks in the rapid eddies of the north-country streams.

When young Turner at length awoke to realize the possibilities of life, and yearned to secure a college education, he found his path to success barred by the poor circumstances of his family. Happily, an exhibition placed at his disposal by Lord Wentworth smoothed the difficulties of the poor scholar. In due course he became a member of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. There he studied with Ridley and other men who afterwards became famous in history, and there he took his degree in 1529–1530, being also elected a fellow of his college in the latter year. His cotemporarycontemporary [sic] naturalist, John Caius, was about twenty-three when he was elected to a fellowship at Gonville Hall. If we venture to conjecture that Turner obtained his fellowship about the same age, it would appear that he was born about the year 1507, i.e. during the last years of Henry VII. He spent the next ten years of his life as a Cambridge don, acting latterly as senior treasurer of his college. As he constantly resided within easy reach of the then undrained fens, in which Savi's Warbler (Locustella luscinoides) reeled to its brooding mate among the forests of reeds, it is not surprising that he acquired an intimate knowledge of the habits of British wildfowl. Did he seek to traverse the quaking bogs in quest of some rare flower which was needed for his herbarium? Why, then, the Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa belgica) yelped round the track of the venturesome naturalist. Had he occasion to search for water-plants in the ponds of the district? Why, then, his intrusion into a region of watery waste must of course be resented by the clouds of Black Terns (Hydrochelidon nigra), which filled the air above their breeding colonies with deafening clamour as they hovered about their eggs, or swept hither and thither in tumultuous confusion. But Turner must have enjoyed his greatest triumph when he visited the wild Cranes (Grus communis) that then returned annually to breed among the fens. His interest in these fine birds must have been very great, for he took pains to find the young Cranes in many seasons. (This we know from the emphatic language which Turner himself employed on purpose to confute the assertion then current that the Crane did not breed in England: "Apud Anglos etiam nidulantur grues in locis