Experience in birds. 51 



bird continue undiminished in the open districts of Germany, 

 although it hatches but two or three young ones a year, and 

 although it is much persecuted, not so much for the value of 

 its flesh (only that of the young being esteemed), as for the 

 sake of destroying a creature so injurious to the crops, es- 

 pecially those of colza, or rape seed, and on account of the 

 sport. I have often admired the sagacity, which enables this 

 large and heavy creature to exist and thrive amid so many 

 dangers, in a thickly peopled country ; but in adverting more 

 particularly to the means through which it effects this pur- 

 pose, we shall find that every generation learns instinctively 

 from the former, what objects the experience of the latter 

 has taught them to shun. From these the bird recedes at 

 very great distances ; but it takes not to the wing, nor does 

 it run away, at the sight of every object of certain kinds, but 

 it makes the nicest distinctions between the different varieties 

 or modifications of the same kind of object. It evinces no 

 great fear of man in general, but it shuns men dressed like 

 gamekeepers or sportsmen, and if the latter put on peasants' 

 frocks, they have a much better chance of getting near the 

 bustards. In neighbourhoods where this stratagem has been 

 often tried, the disguise is not sufficient, but the sportsman 

 must behave like a peasant for many hours, within sight of 

 the flock, and draw near and retreat among rural occupations, 

 before he has an opportunity of uncovering his rifle to shoot 

 at one of the bustards. The stratagem of disguising oneself 

 as a peasant woman with a high basket on one's back, in 

 which the rifle is, and of feigning to be weeding, succeeds 

 the best now, because few hunters have been original or 

 eager enough to resort to it. I know a shepherd, who inva- 

 riably succeeds in driving the bustards near a pit made for 

 the purpose at a convenient place, in which the hunter lies 

 concealed. But this man, who has almost as quick an eye 

 as the bustards themselves, sometimes works from morning 

 till late in the afternoon, before he brings the birds fairly in. 

 He takes a wheelbarrow, fills it with earth, which he carries 

 to some distant spot, but in all his movements he is directed 

 by a plan of operation, through which he gains his point, 

 sooner or later, according to the degree of caution which the 

 bustards show that day ; and they cannot find him out, as 

 the dreaded report of the gun comes from a different quarter. 

 With reference to other moving objects, as different sorts of 

 carriages, they are now most distrustful of droskes, because 

 these are the favourite conveyance of sporting characters, and 

 the bustards have often been shot at from them. In a close 

 carriage one may pass -comparatively near the bustards, when 



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