By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 131 
saw them in Spain, apparently walking in file, some with their 
heads down, as he was ascending the Guadalquiver in a steam-boat. 
When they take wing, they generally rise to a considerable height 
above the ground, and will fly often at an elevation of one hundred 
feet, with a regular, but by no means slow flap of the wings, for 
two miles or more before they alight again. As both in flight and 
in running its speed is remarkable, naturalists have been much 
puzzled to account for the specific names assigned to it, as the 
universal scientific name “tarda,” and by the French “ outarde,” 
and by the Spanish “ abutarda.” In the paper above alluded to in 
Frazer’s Magazine, Albertus is quoted, as accounting for these 
specific names, thus, “ Bistarda avis est bis vel ter saltum dans, 
priusquam de humo elevetur, unde et eis nomen factum,” and this 
alleged habit of the bird, giving two or three leaps, before it rises 
from the ground, and thus recalling the action of ascending a stair- 
case, is mentioned as being likewise the origin of its German name 
“ Trapp-gans,” whence also the quaint distich— 
‘‘The big-boaned Bustard then, whose body beares that size, 
That he against the wind must runne, ere he can rise.” 
Such then being the habits of the bird, I proceed to its history; 
and here we can trace it back to very remote times, its form 
appearing among the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and many well-known 
ancient writers having thought it not unworthy of mention. 
Athenzeus, Plutarch, lian, Oppian, Xenophon, Aristotle, and 
Pliny, are some of those who have described it, and though much 
fable is mixed up with their accounts, the description is sufficiently 
clear to enable us to identify the bird. But to pass on from these 
bustards of ancient Greece and Asia, to those of ancient Britain, 
when the Druids were in full force, and held their mystic rites at 
Avebury and Stonchenge, then this bird flourished on the unbroken 
down, and abounded in the unreclaimed wastes throughout this 
county; its name was “Yr araf ehedydd,” but to what extent it 
abounded, or how far it was looked upon as game, or how much 
it was the object of pursuit in those days of flint arrow-heads, does 
not so clearly appear. To come down, however, to a much later 
period, from the earliest records we have of it in comparatively 
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