24 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
ever, that my friend, Mr. W. H. Roberts, who practised 
for many years as a surgeon at Feltwell, where he first 
took up his residence in 1811, informs me that he 
used frequently to see bustards on the large open 
fields about Cranwich, though never more than two or 
three together ; and on riding after them on horseback, 
they would run a considerable distance before taking 
wing. 
Mr. Lubbock, referring to the wholesale slaughter 
committed by that notorious otidicide George Turner, 
of Wretham, states that on one occasion having placed 
his big duck-guns so as to command the spot where 
he had laid food for the bustards, he succeeded in killing 
seven at one discharge. I have ascertained, however, 
that this feat, although Turner “tulit honores,’ was, 
after all, not performed by him, but by another person. 
Mr. E. Abbott, of Parndon, Essex, and formerly of 
Wretham, thus describes the occurrence in a letter 
recently received from him, adding at the same time 
several additional particulars :—“I think it was early 
in the spring of 1812, as far as I can recollect. The 
guns, four very large ones, had been fixed many days 
by Turner (the then head keeper at Wretham, where 
my father was steward and manager), before anything 
like an opportunity offered of killing more than three or 
four. When one wild day, returning from Thetford, 
where I had been sent by my father, I saw with a pocket 
telescope, which I generally carried, that no less than ten 
birds were all directly before the guns, and on the very 
spot where Turner had constantly been wishing to see 
especially so in England. In an interesting paper on this bird 
by the Rev. A. C. Smith, the author inclines to the belief that 
the “sport” of coursing bustards was followed “in drizzling wet 
weather” when “the birds’ feathers were soaked in rain” (Wilt- 
shire Magazine, vol. i1., pp. 141-144). A singularly unsports- 
manlike practice it would seem ! 
