GREAT BUSTARD. i 
agriculturist has to contend.* The continuous drifting 
forward of innumerable sharp angular particles, con- 
sisting almost entirely of comminuted flint, so chafes 
the tender cuticle of young corn or turnips, that an 
exposed breck after a few hours’ gale, looks as if it had 
been subjected to a blast of air at an excessive tempera- 
ture, and in a day or two the vegetation withers away to 
the destruction of the farmers’ hopes. When this has 
happened remedy he has none, he can look alone to 
prevention. Accordingly, under the fostering care of 
the landlords, numerous plantations have, within the 
last fifty or sixty years, sprung up throughout the whole 
of this tract, not only entirely changing its aspect but 
rendering it entirely unsuitable to the wary habits of 
the bustard, which soon learned to become jealous as 
any strategist of what might afford an enemy harbour. 
Prior to the practice of planting becoming general, the 
bustard was probably as numerous here as any where in 
England.t Icklingham heath has been for many years 
* My limited space enables me only to quote the title of an 
interesting paper on this subject in the “ Philosophical Transac- 
tions,” to which I would here draw the attention of my readers, 
being an account of a very remarkable disaster, originating on 
Lakenheath warren, apparently about the end of the sixteenth or 
beginning of the seventeenth century, and devastating the land 
for a distance of five miles till stopped by the river at Downham :— 
“A curious and exact relation of a Sand-floud, which hath lately 
overwhelmed a great tract of land in the county of Suffolk; 
together with an account of the check in part given to it; com- 
municated in an obliging letter to the publisher, by that worthy 
gentleman Thomas Wright, Esq., living upon the place, and a 
sufferer by that deluge.”—Phil. Trans., 1668, vol. iii., pp. 722-725. 
+ It is of this particular locality that Yarrell writes (“Brit. Bds.,” 
ord ed.), “ My worthy friend, the late Mr. Frederick J. Nash, of Bishop 
Stortford, several times told me, that when he was a young man, 
and then taking the field as a sportsman, he once saw nine flights 
of bustards in one day, not far from Thetford, in Norfolk. Some 
D 
