GREAT BUSTARD. 205 



Although the Great Bustard had ceased to be au indige- 

 nous British species, stragglers from time to time made 

 their appearance, and naturally, in the majority of cases, 

 were observed on the open and uncultivated districts suited 

 to their habits. In March, 1843, a female was shot on 

 moorland between Helston and the Lizard ; another, also a 

 hen bird, was shot near St. Austell, in January, 1854, and — 

 to continue the list of occurrences in Cornwall — yet a third 

 female was captured alive near Looe, on the 12th December, 

 1879. One, believed by its size to be a female, was seen on 

 Salisbury Plain by Mr. G. E.. Waterhouse, of the British 

 Museum, in the month of August, 1849, when returning to 

 Salisbury with a party of friends from a visit to Stonehenge, 

 the bird being seen several times on the wing during an 

 interval of eight or ten minutes (Zool. p. 2590). A second 

 bird, also a female, was shot in January, 1850, at Lydd, 

 in Romney Marsh, and passed into the possession of Dr. 

 Plomley (Zool. p. 2700). The third was shot on the 31st 

 of December, 1851, at Bratton Clovelly, in North Devon, 

 and became the property of Mr. J. G. Newton, of Millaton 

 Bridestow (Naturalist, 1852, p. 33) ; and on the 8th of 

 February, 1853, one was killed in a turnip field at Lees 

 Hill, Lanuercost, Cumberland, and came into the pos- 

 session of Mr. Joseph Mowbray, at Brampton (Zool. p. 

 4407). 



On Thursday, January the 3rd, 1856, as a boy, about 

 nine years of age, was on his way by the Salisbury road, 

 from Hungerford, in Berkshire, to a lone farm about a mile 

 off, with his brother's dinner at twelve o'clock, he saw a 

 large red bird on the ground, fluttering about near the edge 

 of a piece of turnips. He went close up to it, and observed 

 that it had a broken leg; he tried to lay hold of it, but the 

 bird " pecked at him, bit his fingers, and put out his great 

 wings." He caught hold of one of them, and dragged the 

 bird along the ground by it for nearly a quarter of a mile to 

 the farm, where a farming man killed it for him, by breaking 

 its neck, that the boy, as he said, might carry it easier. 

 The boy says the bird was quite clean when he first saw it. 



