AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 347 



a dog who came suddenly down wind upon it in a 

 gale, or from captures of moulting or young birds 

 before they could fly ; for although the Bustards can 

 run at great speed, and always do so for a few yards 

 before taking wing, their flight is very powerful and, 

 for so heavy a bird, rapid and well sustained. It is 

 true that the old males, after two or three long 

 flights in warm weather, often fly within a yard or 

 two of the ground with their beaks open and panting 

 audibly ; but even on these occasions they will flap 

 on for a mile or two, and are certainly more difficult 

 to tii'e out than the Red-legged Partridge. The 

 Spaniards assured us that when mortally wounded, 

 but not instantly killed, the Bustards invariably void 

 their excrement on receiving the shot, and my own 

 experience fully confirms the truth of this statement. 

 I have very recently been furnished, by the 

 kindness of a friend, with some very interesting 

 details concerning the Great Bustard in Yorkshire in 

 the early part of this century ; they are too bulky to 

 transcribe at length, especially after having been 

 induced to wander so far from Northamptonshire as 

 I have been beguiled to do by delightful reminis- 

 cences, but the pith of these Yorkshire memoranda 

 is to the effect that, in the spring or early summer of 

 1828, a Bustard was sitting on her eggs in a field on 

 the high wolds, on land at that time in the possession 

 of the Duke of Devonshire. The writer of these 

 memoranda was informed of this fact by the tenant 

 of the farm upon which the nest was situated, but 

 never heard of the result. The second important 

 fact, communicated in MS. to the writer by a 

 grandson of the perpetrator, is the capture of no less 

 than eleven Great Bustards as the result of a single 

 discharge of a heavy shoulder-gun from behind a 



