By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 137 
Wiltshire specimen is, with the rest of Mr. Warriner’s birds, now 
in the possession of W. Tugwell, Esq., at Devizes. 
In addition to the above instances of the capture or observation 
of these last remnants of the Great Bustard, some very interesting 
particulars of these birds have already appeared in our Magazine, 
vol. II, p. 212, obligingly communicated to reply to the queries 
we put forth about them in vol. I, p. 54. In Maton’s “Natural 
History of Wiltshire,” (by the way a very meagre and incorrect 
account), is the following.—“ A very observant and credible person 
of the name of Dew, whom I knew as a sportsman in my younger 
days, informed me in the year 1796, that he once saw as many as 
seven or eight of these birds together on the downs, near Winter- 
bourne Stoke; but I have not met with any one since, who has 
actually seen the bustard in Wiltshire subsequently to that year.” 
Others, however, were more fortunate, and, in addition to the 
instances above-mentioned, we have many published accounts of it 
sthee that date. Thus, in the year 1800, Daniel in his “Rural 
Sports,” recounts how Mr. Crouch of Burford, shot a hen bustard 
on Salisbury Plain, with a common fowling-piece and partridge 
shot, at 40 yards distance, and how there were two other bustards 
in company with the one shot, neither of which appeared to be 
hurt. In 1802 Montagu observes that the bustard is only found 
upon the large extensive plains, and that the species is almost extinct, 
except upon those of Wiltshire, where they had become very scarce 
within these few years. 
In 1812, the Editor of the last edition of Pennant says, “the 
breed is now nearly extirpated, except on the downs of Wiltshire, 
where it is also very scarce.” In 1813, Montagu in the Supplement 
to his Dictionary, says, “we were informed by the shepherds that 
they had not been seen for the last two or three years in their 
favorite haunts on the Wiltshire downs, where we have often 
contemplated this noble bird with pleasure.” In 1821, Graves 
(whose figure of the Great Bustard was drawn from a male bird 
taken alive on Salisbury Plain in 1797, and kept for three years in 
confinement, when it died), says, in the third volume of his “British 
Ornithology,” “the enclosing and cultivating those extensive downs 
ie 
