84 The Birds of Cambridgeshire 



but they have long ago ceased to provide those quiet haunts 

 which to this shy bird seem indispensable. The eggs were 

 protected by a law of Henry VIII. in 1534, under the same 

 penalty as those of the Crane twenty pence apiece, but 

 in neither case, as will be seen above, does the Act seem 

 to have produced the desired effect. Attempts have been 

 made of late years to re-establish the Bustard at Feltwell, 

 near Brandon, and at Elveden, near Thetford, but at present 

 without success. A few individuals, however, still occasionally 

 stray to Britain. 



Professor Newton has kindly furnished me with the follow- 

 ing additional notes on this species : 



" Two stuffed examples of the Bustard from Cambridgeshire 

 are in the University Museum, but whence they were procured 

 is not known : either or both may possibly be of foreign origin, 

 and not of the old English breed. 



"The late Mr Joseph Clark of Saffron Walden told me 

 that it was said that one of them was shot by a man of 

 the name of Davy of Hinxton, his gun being loaded with a 

 black-lead pencil. The bird was wounded, but flew to Shel- 

 ford, where I suppose it was taken. The story of the other 

 specimen is that it was killed at Ickleton. 



" The Museum has also two other English Bustards, one 

 from Icklingham in Suffolk. Of the second nothing is known. 



"The Museum contains an egg taken in Cam bridges! lire, 

 and given to the Philosophical Society in 1831 by a Mr Barron 

 concerning whom I have never been able to make out 

 anything. 



"The late Dr William Clark, Professor of Anatomy, used 

 to say that once, while riding over Trumpington Heath, he 

 came upon a strange, bird on the ground. He took it up 

 and brought it to Cambridge, when, finding that it was a 

 young Bustard, he rode back to the place where he found it 

 and left it there. 



"At the end of February and beginning of March, 1856, 

 a bustard frequented Burwell Fen and the neighbourhood for 



