GREAT BUSTARD. 9 



recently existed, much valuable information ; and to this 

 end, commencing in the year 1851, Mr. Alfred Newton 

 and his brother Mr. Edward Newton, then residing 

 at Elveden, devoted a considerable amount of time and 

 labour, more especially in the neighbourhood of Thetford, 

 on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk. Of this " hear- 

 say" evidence, I consider myself most fortunate in being 

 enabled to give a summary, since, having been carefully 

 written do^vn at the time, after conversations held with 

 many of the oldest men, and those most conversant with 

 the now exterminated birds, on the Elveden and adjoining 

 estates, it contains many interesting facts, which in a 

 few years might have been lost altogether, or, at best, 

 would have survived only in the vague and unsatisfactory 

 form of local traditions. 



During the last hundred years the story of the 

 bustard in Norfolk and the adjoining parts of Suffolk — 

 for it would be inexpedient here to be restricted by 

 merely civil limits — seems to be this. The open country 

 round Swaffham, and that near Thetford, formed each 

 the head-quarters of a " drove," for so an assemblage of 

 these birds was locally called. The Swaffham tract, a 

 long narrow range, chiefly lying in the " breck " district, 

 bounded on the east by the enclosed part of the county, 

 and on the west by the fens, extended probably from 

 Heacham in the north to Cranwich in the south, if 

 indeed it did not reach by way of Mundford and Weeting 

 across the borders of the county to the Wangford and 

 Lakenheath uplands, which are strictly part of the Thet- 

 ford or Stow tract, to be presently considered^. In this 



* It is possible, also, that the two tracts were more contei^minous 

 than the evidence at hand shows, and that there was communica- 

 tion in a more direct line by way of Ickborough, Tofts, and Croxton, 

 between the two " droves." It seems to have been a belief, that 

 when the cock birds failed in the Swaffham tract, the hens 

 c 



