By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 141 
Though in a poor emaciated condition when captured, it weighed 
thirteen and a quarter pounds, and measured from tip to tip of the 
wings, six feet three inches. How so large, powerful, and pugnacious 
a bird, should suffer itself to be mastered by a boy of tender age, 
seems strange at first sight, but if we take into account the broken 
leg, the wound in which seemed to be a stale one of some days’ 
standing, and its consequent exhaustion from loss of blood; and if 
we suppose the boy to have caught hold of the /eft wing, the same 
side as the broken leg, we can easily conceive how the bird was 
rendered powerless, and could not recover itself to offer resistance. 
How it came by the broken leg, has been also much disputed, the 
limb not being shattered as if by shot, but the bone broken off, as 
if by ball, and the fracture being too high up to have been caused 
by atrap. Mr. Yarrell suggested the probability of the accident 
occurring by the bird getting its leg entangled among the bars of 
a sheep hurdle, and making efforts to get loose; but ever since I 
gained intelligence of the keeper’s shot with a cartridge, I have 
come to the conclusion that that shot took effect, and that the bird 
he fired at, and the one caught subsequently by the little boy, were 
one and the same, and therefore Henswood, (the scene of the 
keeper’s shot,) being in Wiltshire, I lay claim to this bustard as a 
bona fide Wiltshire specimen, though I own it was so misguided 
as to cross the border to die within the county of Berks. I am 
happy to add, that this last of the Wiltshire bustards is established 
in the county, in the excellent collection of the Rey. G. Marsh, at 
Sutton Benger. 
I shall conclude my account of the Great Bustard by some 
enquiry into another doubtful point with regard to this bird, as to 
whether or no it was hunted down with greyhounds by our ancestors; 
a practice generally declared by our older Ornithologists to have 
been in vogue, though of late years it has been much disputed. 
There are three distinct opinions on this knotty point, each of 
which has its strenuous supporters. 1. That old and young birds 
indiscriminately, were so hunted by greyhounds. 2. That the 
young only were so coursed. 38. And that neither old or young 
could have been ever so taken. With regard to the first, that both 
