136 The Great Bustard. 
it in a little close belonging to the house, and that several bustards 
used to come and congregate round their confined companion at 
that date, and that people often used to hear them at night. The 
confined bird is described to have been a kind of spotted turkey. 
At that date the good people of Tilshead affirm there were many 
bustards haunting the flat between that village and Shrewton; they 
were also in some abundance near the now Bustard Inn. Mr. 
Coleman, of Tilshead, says he perfectly recollects how horses tra- 
velling over the plain, were known to shy at the noise of the bustards. 
The late Mr. Robert Pinckney, of Berwick St. James’, used to say 
that during his occupation of Mr. Duke’s farm at Lake, the bustard 
used to make its nest every year in the water meadows belonging 
to the estate, and was disturbed annually by the mowers. Again, 
a Mr. Compton, of Eastcott, described as a great sportsman and 
bird studier, was known to have shot two of these birds; while an 
old whip of Squire Tinkers, carried nolens volens down a steep 
‘“linchet”’ in the ardour of the chase, almost rode over two bustards, 
and could have struck them with his whip, had he been prepared 
to encounter such tenants of the linchets base; he said they “ were 
spotted all’s one as a pheasant.” Mr. B. Hayward, of Easterton, 
near Devizes, says he recollects the keeper of West Lavington 
having often told him that when a boy, as he was on the downs 
with his father and the dogs, they came upon a young bustard, 
which he caught, but it being only partly grown, his father 
made him put it down again, saying, it would be better worth 
taking in a fortnight, at the end of which time they came up again, 
found, and took it: this shows the wildness of the downs at that 
time, but little of them being cultivated. Again, the late Rev. R. 
Ashe, of Langley Burrell, was riding in 1806 from Broad Hinton 
to Chisledon, when he rode down what he then conjectured, and 
afterwards ascertained to be a young bustard; having farther to 
go, he got off his horse, and tied its feet with a pocket handkerchief, 
and left it in a hole in a ploughed field; but on his return, to his 
chagrin, both the bird and handkerchief were missing. Another 
bustard was killed in the early part of the present century at Langley, 
and came into the fine collection of Mr. Warriner of Conock; this 
