138 The Great Bustard. 
and heaths in various parts of Great Britain, on which formerly 
this noble species was seen in large flocks, threatens within a few 
years to extirpate the bustard from this country; instead of being 
met with in flocks of forty or fifty birds, it is a circumstance of 
rare occurrence that a single individual is now seen.” Bewick 
merely states generally that ‘“bustards were formerly more frequent 
in this island than at present,” and that ‘they are now found only 
in the open countries of the south and east, in the plains of Wiltshire, 
Dorsetshire, &c.; and in 1825, Selby, in his “ Illustrations of Orni- 
thology,” unable, on repeated enquiry, to hear of the re-appearance 
of a single bustard, since the days of Montagu, even in its most 
favorite haunts, pronounces “the breed to be extinct upon our 
extensive downs, of which it once formed the appropriate ornament.” 
Thus has this noble species, once so common in our county, 
dwindled and died away, and now, alas! is no more to be accounted 
a resident throughout the kingdom. Occasionally, however, a 
straggler makes its appearance in some quarter, and from its large 
size, invariably attracts observation, which generally ends in its 
capture. These occurrences have taken place in Norfolk, Suffolk, 
Cambridgeshire, and more recently, in 1843, a female was shot in 
Cornwall, near the Lizard Point, while in 1850 another was killed 
in Romney Marsh in Kent, and another in 1851 in Devonshire; 
both of these two last were females: but Wiltshire still stands 
pre-eminent as the haunt even of stragglers of this species, two 
specimens having occurred in the county within the last six years ; 
one in 1849 near Stonehenge, seen and recorded by Mr. Waterhouse 
of the British Museum, a well-known Naturalist, and the other, the 
subject of this memoir, at the beginning of the present year near 
Hungerford. 
With regard to the first of these, Mr. Waterhouse was returning 
with a party of friends, from Stonehenge, at about seven in the 
evening, in the month of August, when a great bustard rose and 
flew with a heavy, but tolerably rapid, flight at about twenty feet 
above the ground; it was very wild, and would not suffer itself to 
be approached; Mr. Waterhouse never entertained any doubt of the 
species, and had a clear view of the bird for about ten minutes. 
