18 BTKDS OF NORFOLK. 



celebrated as a habitat for it. George Edwards, in his 

 " Natural History," says that the subject of his plate of 

 tbis bird, wbich bears date 1746, "was presented to me 

 fresh and in fine order by Mr. Daniel Gwilt, of Milk- 

 street, London, my mucb esteemed friend and relation ;" 

 and the Rev. Robert Gwilt, the present representative of 

 that family, long seated at Icklingbam, has lately been 

 good enough to furnish the information that Edwards's 

 original drawing from a bird killed at that place is now 

 in his possession. Yet it would seem that Icklingham 

 was not the chief place of resort for bustards in that 

 tract, since the testimony of all the oldest men of the 

 neighbourhood, now or lately surviving, points to North 

 Stow heath as the stronghold — though, in truth, the 

 difference is but slight, for this last is in an adjoining 

 parish. But no doubt the birds shifted their ground 

 from place to place within the tract according to the 

 supply of food. Tradition gives forty to thirty as the 

 strength of the drove in the last century, and it does not 

 appear to have much, if at all, diminished at the 

 beginning of the present, for that estimate is confirmed 

 by several of the eye-witnesses examined, one of whom 

 peeping over a warren bank, at Elveden, as near as he 

 could recollect about the year 1812, and just after 

 harvest, saw quite close to him a drove which might 

 have consisted of forty birds, " large and small," which 

 sat there preening their feathers. The evidence of 

 another man, who, as a boy, was about that time or a 

 little earlier, shepherd's page at Barnham, where he 

 caught a young bird alive, tends also to show that from 



of these birds were probably seen more than once, but at that time, 

 the beginning of the present century, the country between Thetford 

 and Brandon, and from thence southward to Mildenhall, was con- 

 sidered the head-quarters of the great bustard in the counties of 

 Norfolk and Suffolk." 



