GREAT BUSTARD. 585 
peak of the Hartz Mountains. To the north stretches a vast rolling prairie, 
bounded by low ranges of hills, for the most part covered with oak- and 
beech-forest. In the middle of this prairie lies the town of Halberstadt, 
celebrated amongst ornithologists as the seat of Heine’s great collection of 
birds. Oberamtmann Ferdinand Heine lives in an old mansion which was 
formerly (in the pre-Napoleonic days) the monastery of St. Burchard, 
now a Rittergut ; and here he most hospitably entertained me and my son, 
who, with Dr. Blasius, were expressly invited to take the nest of a Great 
Bustard, and examine our host’s magnificent collection of birds. A carriage 
and pair met us at the station to drive us up to the nest. We stopped 
halfway to lunch at another Rittergut, where one of Heine’s sons occu- 
pies himself with farming on a great scale—high farming, said to be carried 
to the greatest perfection of which it is capable. No hedges are to be 
seen, and, except on the roadsides and round the villages and baronial 
halls of the Oberamtminner, no trees are visible. Rye, wheat, barley, 
peas, potatoes, and especially beetroot for sugar, grow in fields which 
may almost be measured by square miles instead of acres. The nest had 
been discovered four days before, when the bird ran through the low 
wheat, which was not much more than a foot high, for about fifty yards 
and then took wing. It was scarcely to be expected that she would sit so 
close when her neighbourhood was invaded by such a formidable expedi- 
tion as ours was, and we saw nothing of her, but we soon found the 
nest, containing three eggs. It was a slight hollow in the midst of the 
wheat, not more than an inch depressed even in the centre, and occu- 
pied a space about 18 by 13 inches. A handful of dry grass was all the 
lining below the eggs, which were warm and slightly incubated. A 
few miles further on, the ground slightly rises, and trees and roads and 
villages are much thinner on the ground. This is the best Bustard 
district, and here in winter flocks of thirty or forty birds are sometimes 
seen together. The Great Bustard is said to be polygamous, but there 
does not seem to be any satisfactory evidence of the fact. They do not 
migrate except in very hard winters. 
The Great Bustard lives almost entirely on vegetable food, the leaves of 
various plants, the young corn, and seeds of different kinds. The young 
are said to feed almost exclusively upon insects. The old birds are said 
occasionally to eat insects and not to refuse a mouse, a hamster, or even 
a lizard or a frog. In winter the females flock apart from the males. 
Naumann is of opinion that the Great Bustard is not polygamous, that it 
pairs early in spring, and that the flocks seen in summer are composed of 
birds of the year not yet old enough to breed. Although the Bustard has 
not yet learnt that a waggon may contain a dangerous chasseur, it has 
convinced itself that a railway-train is a harmless apparition. We passed 
within thirty yards of a hen Bustard on the line between Kustendji and 
