ild fowl
throughout England for a season, whereby the land within few years was
thoroughly replenished again. But what stand I upon this impertinent
discourse? Of such therefore as are bred in our land, we have the
crane, the bitter,[1] the wild and tame swan, the bustard, the heron,
curlew, snite, wildgoose, wind or doterell, brant, lark, plover (of
both sorts), lapwing, teal, widgeon, mallard, sheldrake, shoveller,
peewitt, seamew, barnacle, quail (who, only with man, are subject to
the falling sickness), the knot, the oliet or olive, the dunbird,
woodcock, partridge, and pheasant, besides divers others, whose names
to me are utterly unknown, and much more the taste of their flesh,
wherewith I was never acquainted. But as these serve not at all
seasons, so in their several turns there is no plenty of them wanting
whereby the tables of the nobility and gentry should seem at any time
furnished. But of all these the production of none is more marvellous,
in my mind, than that of the barnacle, whose place of generation we
have sought ofttimes as far as the Orchades, whereas peradventure we
might have found the same nearer home, and not only upon the coasts of
Ireland, but even in our own rivers. If I should say how either these
or some such other fowl not much unlike unto them have bred of late
times (for their place of generation is not perpetual, but as
opportunity serveth and the circumstances do minister occasion) in the
Thames mouth, I do not think that many will believe me; yet such a
thing hath there been seen where a kind of fowl had his beginning upon
a short tender shrub standing near unto the shore, from whence, when
their time came, they fell down, either into the salt water and lived,
or upon the dry land and perished, as Pena the French herbarian hath
also noted in the very end of his herbal. What I, for mine own part,
have seen here by experience, I have already so touched upon in the
chapter of islands, that it should be but time spent in vain to repeat
it here again. Look therefore in the description of Man (or Manaw) for
more of these barnacles, as also in the eleventh chapter of the
description of Scotland, and I do not doubt but you shall in some
respect be satisfied in the generation of these fowls. As for egrets,
pawpers, and such like, they are daily brought unto us from beyond the
sea, as if all the fowl of our country could not suffice to satisfy
our delicate appetites.

[1] The proper Engl