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 down 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 
* Ttis possible, also, that the two tracts were more conterminous 
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 
Cc 
