Note 14 — NOTES[H] ON CERTAIN BIRDS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

Although it has been met with in Norfolk, more frequently than perhaps in any other part of England, the Stork was never other than a rare spring and autumn visitor to Norfolk. Turner writes of it in 1544 as unknown in England, save as a captive, and Merrett a hundred years later says it rarely flies hither, which is equally true at the present time. Hewittson ("Eggs of Brit. Birds," Ed. 3, ii., p. 309; under Crane) was evidently misled by some remarks made by Evelyn, who visited Sir Thomas Browne in Norwich in October, 1671, and says in his diary that he saw Browne's "Collection of the eggs of all the fowl and birds he could procure; that country, especially the promontory of Norfolk, being frequented, as he said, by several birds which seldom or never go further into the land—as cranes, storks, eagles, and a variety of water-fowl." From this Hewitson infers that the Stork bred in Norfolk, a construction which the somewhat ambiguously worded passage will certainly not bear. I imagine collections of eggs were not very common in Browne's time.