Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/371

Rh palustribus, et earum pipiones'sæpissime vidi, quod quidam extra Angliam nati falsum esse contendunt.")

But Turner does not appear to have confined his field work to the neighbourhood of Cambridge. If he was eager to watch the Marsh Harrier or "Balbushard" (Cinclus æruginosus) quartering the marshes of Ely in quest of Duck or Coot, assuredly he was no less pleased to visit the Cormorants which nested on the lofty trees also occupied by a Norfolk Hernery.

But Turner was a man of strong religious convictions, and he lived in times which encouraged strife. Good naturalist as he was, he allowed his better judgment to be overpowered by sectarian bitterness, and for a time he lost his liberty. Released from prison, probably about 1542, he wisely went abroad, and occupied himself with his favourite hobbies. His continental travels enabled him to become acquainted with the habits of the White Stork (Ciconia alba), the Hoopoe (Upupa epops), and other birds which he had never met with in England. The pleasure which he derived from his wanderings must have been immense. For example, when he climbed the Alps, he became aware for the first time of the existence of a species which he had never heard of before—the European Nutcracker (Nucifraga caryocatactes). To us the bird would be simply an old favourite, whose undulating flight recalled many happy hours spent amidst glorious pine forests; but to Turner it was a revelation, a form such as he had never contemplated,—its flight strange to his eye, its note weird, its coloration unique in his experience. Then, too, there was the curious fact that (as the Swiss peasants assured him), it did not feed upon grain or carrion like the Rooks and Crows of his own country, but it depended upon the harvest of nuts which the coppices of the wooded valleys supplied, reminding him of the little blue Nuthatches, or "Nut-jobbers," as the country-folk called them (Sitta cæsia), the birds whose shrill notes and lively actions had so often cheered him when strolling through the Cambridge gardens. Turner travelled into Italy, and even attended the botanical lectures of Lucas Ghinus at Bologna before he journeyed to Zurich, the home of Conrad Gesner. The meeting between the two great naturalists must have possessed many interesting features, and there can be no