GREAT BUSTARD. 581 
OTIS TARDA. 
GREAT BUSTARD. 
| (PuatE 22.) 
Otis otis, Briss. Orn. v. p. 18 (1760). 
Otis tarda, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 264 (1766) ; et auctorum plurimorum—TZatham, 
Temminck, Naumann, Dresser, Saunders, &c. 
Otis major, Brehm, Vig. Deutschl. p. 531 (1831). 
“Once upon a time,” as the story-books say, the Great Bustard was a 
resident in the British Islands. It must always have been an extremely 
local bird in this country, as it is exclusively a bird of the steppes, seldom 
or never found near trees. In the days of long ago, before the forests 
were cut down, the steppe country of England was probably confined to 
four districts—the Merse of Berwickshire across the Scottish border; the 
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire wolds ; the warrens or ‘‘ brecks”’* of Norfolk, 
Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire ; and the downs of Dorset, Wilts, Hampshire, 
and Sussex, including Salisbury Plain. The earliest account of the Great 
Bustard in the British Islands is to be found in ‘ A History of Scotland,’ 
published in the year 1526 by Hector Boece or Boethius. He describes this 
bird, which he calls “ the Gustard,” as being as great as a Swan, but in colour 
of feathers and taste of flesh differing little from a Partridge ; and breeding 
on the lowlands of the Merse in Berwickshire, a district a hundred thousand 
acres in extent, which may be regarded as the Salisbury Plain of Scotland. 
On the Yorkshire wolds the last specimen was supposed (Eagle Clarke, 
‘ Handbook Vert. Fauna of Yorkshire,’ p. 65) to have been killed about 
the year 18380; but on the neighbouring wolds of Lincolnshire it had 
probably become extinct about the commencement of the present century 
(Cordeaux, ‘ Birds of the Humber District,’ p. 83). The heathy warrens 
of the eastern counties, with their adjoining wheat-lands, appear to have 
been the last breeding-place of this fine bird in the British Islands. It is 
believed that the last male was destroyed in 1838; but females lingered 
on until 1845 (Stevenson, ‘ Birds of Norfolk,’ 1. p. 15). The latest 
reliable information of the existence of the Bustard on the Downs appears 
* The word steppe is derived from some old English word signifying “ wide-stretching.” 
The Merse may possibly mean the “March” or boundary-line between England and 
Scotland. The word breck has the same drigin as the German word “ Brach,” a fallow or 
broken ground. A down (the same as a dune or sand-hill) means a range of hills near the 
sea without trees upon it. A wold now has almost the same meaning, a range of naked 
hills, but is evidently derived from the same root as the German “ Wald,” a forest. 
