“ Recent Occurrence of the Great Bustard in Wilts.” 359 
“They represent a good many years of my life—I have worked hard 
in my time”; and then, as he spoke of his increasing weakness, he 
said, “I should like to have had another ten years of life, I think I 
could have finished a good many things then.” He had worked to 
the last, and when the end came he passed away honoured and 
beloved by all who knew him, not merely for his knowledge and his 
learning, but for the genuine goodness of his heart and the singular 
charm of his private character,—the genial kindness and quaint 
humour which made him no less delightful as a companion in private 
life than he was as a lecturer upon the public platform. By his 
personal friends—and perhaps few men could number friends in so 
many and diverse ranks and conditions of life as he could,—by his 
neighbours, even by those who knew him only from his appearance 
at our Annual Meetings, he was alike spoken of as “the dear old 
Canon.” He was, indeed, one of the few of whom it may truly be 
said that it was a privilege to have known him, as he is one of the 
few, too, who will leave an enduring name behind him in the 
antiquarian world—a name that will rank for the future with the 
goodly company of Wiltshire antiquaries, with Aubrey and Hoare 
Philips and Britton, if it does not in the opinion of posterity rank 
first among them all as that of the man who has done most for the 
unravelling of Wiltshire history. 
B.. HG. 
“Recent Occurrence of the Great Bustard 
in Wilts.” 
By the Rev. A. C. SmirH. 
T the end of January, 1891, twenty years bad elapsed since 
the latest visit of the Great Bustard to Wiltshire, and 
not a straggler to its old haunts in this county had been seen since 
the memorable incursion of these birds to the British Isles of 1871, 
