thus much, and so
much may seem sufficient.[181]

CHAPTER XIV.

OF WILD AND TAME FOWLS.

[1577, Book III., Chapters 9 and 11; 1587, Book III., Chapters 2 and 5.]

Order requireth that I speak somewhat of the fowls also of England, which
I may easily divide into the wild and tame; but, alas! such is my small
skill in fowls that, to say the truth, I can neither recite their numbers
nor well distinguish one kind of them from another. Yet this I have by
general knowledge, that there is no nation under the sun which hath
already in the time of the year more plenty of wild fowl than we, for so
many kinds as our island doth bring forth, and much more would have if
those of the higher soil might be spared but one year or two from the
greedy engines of covetous fowlers which set only for the pot and purse.
Certes this enormity bred great troubles in King John's days, insomuch
that, going in progress about the tenth of his reign, he found little or
no game wherewith to solace himself or exercise his falcons. Wherefore,
being at Bristow in the Christmas ensuing, he restrained all manner of
hawking or taking of wild 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,[182] 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