206 OTIDID^. 



but that be made it dirty by dragging it along the field. 

 The bird passed by sale through the hands of two or three 

 persons, and came at length into the possession of Mr. 

 W. H. Eowland, of Hungerford, who sent it to Mr. Lead- 

 beater, of Brewer Street, to be preserved. 



Mr. Rowland called upon the Author on Saturday, the 

 12th instant, and went with him to Brewer Street, to 

 inspect the specimen. Mr. Leadbeater, after the bird was 

 skinned, had examined the inside of the body, and had 

 saved the sexual part in spirit, which showed that it was 

 a young male. The bird appeared to be about eighteen 

 or twenty months old, and was believed to be a bird of the 

 season of 1854. The fracture of the bone of the leg, with 

 the skin torn through, about half way between the true heel 

 and the knee, did not appear as if produced by gun-shot, nor 

 was there a single perforation in any other part of the skin 

 of the bird. The wound was too high up to have been 

 caused by a trap, and perhaps the accident had occurred by 

 the Bustard getting his leg entangled among the bars of 

 sheep hurdles, and making great efforts to get loose. The 

 wound was apparently of some days' standing, and had bled 

 considerably. That the bird was weak and exhausted may 

 be safely inferred from its allowing a boy to drag it along the 

 ground by the wing, so bold and pugnacious as this species 

 is known to be when in health ; there was, moreover, very 

 little blood within the skin where the neck was broken. 

 The soft parts had been irrecoverably made away with, or 

 the neck would have been examined with great interest. 



In the same year (1856) two frequented Burwell Fen, in 

 Cambridgeshire, from the end of January to the 1st of March 

 (Zool. pp. 5063, 5279) ; a young male was killed at Romney 

 in 1859 ; a female on Rufiforth Moor, near York, in February, 

 1861 (Zool. p. 7507) ; and another female was picked up 

 dead, but still warm, near Bridlington Quay, on November 

 11th, 1861 (Zool. p. 9442). Individuals were observed in Lin- 

 colnshire in 1866 and a few years previously ; and in January, 

 1867, one was fired at unsuccessfully by Captain Rising, in 

 the Horsey marshes, Norfolk. Between the autumn of 



