140 The Great Bustard. 
day, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, two young men were 
going shooting, and the mother of the little bustard-catcher asked 
them to come into her cottage to see what a bird she had got, when 
one of them offered her six-pence for it, then eight-pence, and 
ultimately bought it for one shilling, with the promise that the woman 
should have the carcase after the bird was skinned, but its purchase 
by Mr. Rowland prevented that being done. The dragging across 
the field by the boy, and the rough handling of the man at the 
barn, injured its feathers a good deal, but owing to the care and 
skill of Mr. Leadbeater it has been well cleaned, and is pronounced 
by Mr. Yarrell, who also examined it, a very good specimen. The 
latter gentleman was extremely anxious to procure the neck for 
dissection, in order to clear up the much-vexed question, as to 
whether the male bustard has, or has not, the gular pouch, or bag 
between the under side of the tongue, and the lower mandible of 
the bill, which, from the days of Daines Barrington, and Edwards, 
afterwards copied by Bewick and Yarrell in their respective histo- 
ries of British birds, was supposed to exist and to supply the bird 
with drink in dry places when distant from water. Subsequent 
research, and careful anatomical observation, have since shaken 
Mr. Yarrell’s belief in this gular pouch, and in this he is supported 
by the old French Naturalists, with Cuvier at their head, as well 
as Professor Owen of the Royal College of Surgeons; the question, 
however, is still an open one, with warm advocates on both sides, 
“et adhuc sub judice lis est.” 
But to return to the Hungerford bustard. Though, unfortunately 
for science, Mr. Yarrell was unable, in this case, to prosecute his 
investigation by dissection, all the soft parts required having been 
irrecoverably destroyed, Mr. Leadbeater satisfied himself by ana- 
tomical observation that the bird under his hands was a young 
male, and has preserved in spirits a sufficient portion of the body 
to satisfy any one on that point. This is the more important, as, 
though the dimensions are too large for a female, the specimen 
before us being a bird of the second year only, is without the whis- 
kers so conspicuous in an adult male, as may be seen in the woodcut; 
for in young birds these become visible only at the pairing season. 
ET 
