GREAT BUSTARD. Pa 
he pulled the string as he had been told to do, and shot 
two cock birds, weighing twenty-four or twenty-five 
pounds each. There is evidence, also, of hen bustards 
having been captured on their nests. Already before 
1811, Coulson, keeper to Lord Albemarle, had tried ~ 
ineffectually to throw a casting-net over an old bird at 
Elveden, as she was sitting, but he was obliged to 
content himself with taking her eggs and putting them 
under a hen, when in due time they were hatched, and 
and the young, being successfully reared, lived in a 
garden for some time till killed by dogs, which acci- 
dentally obtained an entrance. But more than ten 
years later, Mr. Booty, a farmer, at Barnham, performed 
the feat with greater dexterity at Stow, and carried off 
the old bustard which he kept in the cheese-room of his 
farm house. Besides this a gunsmith, at Bury St. 
Hdmund’s, is said to have encouraged the destruction of 
these birds, buying them when brought to him without 
being particular as to whether they were obtained with 
the leave of the proprietors or without it, and thus 
altogether it would seem as if the bustards in this 
tract of country were more molested than those around 
Swaffham. To this cause may, perhaps, be attributed 
their earlier extinction, for while the latter certainly 
lingered till 1838, there is no trustworthy evidence 
whatever for believing that the former existed later 
than 1832, in the autumn of which year Mr. Thornhill, 
of Riddlesworth, as has been mentioned, had a very 
good view of one on Icklingham heath, and it may be 
pretty confidently stated that this was the last time a 
bustard was observed in that locality. 
As may have been expected, there seems to have 
been little or no difference in the general habits or 
mode of nidification of the bustards in these two tracts. 
They appeared and disappeared at the same periods of 
the year, and frequented localities as nearly as possible 
