GREAT BU.STARD. S65 



the Norvvicli Infirmary, and have but lately been sold by the 

 owner of them. The male bird was very beautiful and cou- 

 rageous, 'apparently afraid of nothing, seizing any one that 

 came near him by the coat ; yet on the appearance of any 

 small Hawk, high in the air, he would squat close to the 

 ground, expressing strong marks of fear. The female was 

 very shy." The Rev. Richard Lubbock sent me word that 

 a female Bustard bred near Thetford in 1832, and carried 

 off her young ones. This nest was upon a warren, but it is 

 most commonly placed in rye. Mr. Elwes shot a female to a 

 pointer in a turnip field at Congham in the autumn of 1831. 

 The continuation of these notes is as follows : — " I know one 

 instance of a specimen killed on the contrary side of Norfolk 

 to that which they generally affect. About ten years ago a 

 person returning home in the parish of Palling, upon the 

 coast, near Winterton, saw an immense bird walking in a 

 marsh by the road side. He rode home, brought his gun, 

 and shot it ; it proved to be a male Bustard of the second 

 year, and is now in the collection of Mr. Postle, a near 

 relation of mine. This is exactly the opposite part of the 

 county to that in which they are generally found. When a 

 boy I remember two or three individuals in a domesticated 

 state. I recollect one of these birds swallowing, in an in- 

 stant, a thin leather glove which I dropped. The system 

 of weeding out corn in the spring has tended perhaps more 

 than any other cause to the decrease of Bustards ; since 

 egg collectors became numerous, a nest is a valuable prize 

 indeed. A very fine bird, — an old male, — is still in preser- 

 vation, as a stuffed specimen, at the house of a friend in my 

 neighbourhood, which was taken by greyhounds forty years 

 ago, within three miles of Norwich."" Among the extracts 

 from the Household Book, A.D. 1519 et seq. for which I 

 am, as before mentioned, under the article Pheasant, at page 

 282, also indebted to the Rev. Richard Lubbock, are the fol- 



