GREAT BUSTARD. 19 
forty to thirty were usually seen together there in 
winter.* About this period, however, commenced the 
practice mentioned of planting trees, and the effect of 
this agricultural improvement soon became manifest. 
Indeed the year 1812 may, perhaps, be looked upon as 
the bustard’s “grand climacteric”—the turning point 
of its existence in this locality. None of the witnesses 
to a later period can speak roundly of such numbers as 
forty or thirty being seen; the largest droves spoken 
to henceforward consisted of twenty-four, and even this 
may have been as early as the year just mentioned. 
The late Mr. Newton, of Elveden, with his brother-in- 
law Mr. Waddington, of Cavenham, and another gentle- 
man, were riding across Icklingham heath when, at the 
end of a plantation, they came suddenly on two dozen 
bustards, which at once took wing and dispersed in all 
directions. After this time no one speaks of seeing 
more than eighteen, and as the experience of the 
different persons questioned draws nearer to the present 
day, fifteen or fourteen, nine, seven, six, five, three, and 
two are successively the numbers specified by the various 
eye-witnesses. Here, too, as in the Swaffham tract, the 
last survivors are reported to have been hens only. 
Though a considerable amount of protection was 
accorded to this bird by some of the largest proprietors, 
the Duke of Grafton, at Euston, Mr. Newton, at 
* It is of course, in most cases, very difficult to get at the date 
of any of these occurrences, but in this case it may be approxi- 
mately reached. The young bustard this man caught was ultimately 
purchased, he said, by “ Lord Paget,” who then lived at Wretham. 
Now this Lord Paget (subsequently the celebrated Marquis of 
Anglesey) in March, 1812, became Earl of Uxbridge. It is, there- 
fore, pretty evident from the name applied to him by the witness, 
that the fact mentioned must have taken place before the higher 
title was assumed. 
+ Mr. Lubbock states, in 1845, on the authority of a veteran 
sportsman, Sir John Shelley, “that forty years ago parties used to 
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