GREAT BUSTARD. 41 
kindly informs me that he has a pair of bustards’ eggs, 
which were procured in Norfolk by his grandfather, Mr. 
Elwes, of Congham, and Colesborne, about the year 1830, 
for the Rev. J. Pitt, who subsequently presented them 
to him. He believes them to have been taken on 
Massingham heath. 
A single egg in the possession of Mr. Clarke, of 
North Wootton, has been satisfactorily established by 
Mr. Southwell, as a genuine Norfolk specimen, although 
its having been blown with two holes at the side, 
according to modern custom, seemed to mark it as 
of somewhat too recent date. This point has, however, 
been fully explained, and other interesting particulars 
respecting it obligingly communicated by Miss Charlotte 
St. John, formerly of Gayton Hall, in this County, 
who, in a letter to Mr. Southwell, remarks—“ The egg 
in question was given to me by the late Rev. Robert 
Hamond, I should think about forty years ago. It was 
found by him or his keeper Denny on Massingham 
heath, and I have a better remembrance of it from the 
circumstance that he sent it in a small beautifully-made 
coffin about a foot long. The egg was inside, wrapped 
up in cotton wool. I can easily explain the two holes 
at the side. Mr. Hamond blew it himself and always 
did so; but I blew mine at the two ends, a point on 
which we did not agree.” This egg, therefore, formed 
part of Miss St. John’s collection, which she presented 
about two years ago to the late Mrs. Barnes, of Gayton 
Hall, at whose death it passed into the hands of Mr. 
Clarke as above stated. It is scarcely possible, at this 
distance of time, to ascertain the exact date when the 
egg was taken, but if, as appears by no means improb- 
able, the little coffin so quaintly employed by Mr. 
Hamond as an egg shell, had some covert allusion to 
the gradual extinction of the bustard in Norfolk, Miss 
St. John is most likely correct in saying, that it was 
“about forty years ago.” 
a 
