Great Bustards. 97 



wholesome. Hence, but chiefly for its rarity, the 

 bustard sells very dear, serving only to furnish 

 Prince's and great men's tables, at feasts and 

 public entertainments." This author also tells us 

 that " on Newmarket and E/oyston Heaths, in 

 Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and elsewhere in 

 wasts and plains, they are found with us." In 

 the Household Books of the L'Estranges of Hun- 

 stanton, in Norfolk, in the "Privy Purse Accounts" 

 for the year 1527, there is the following entry : 



The xljst weke. 



"Wedynsday. Item viij malards, a bustard and 3 hemsewe 

 kylled wt ye crosbowe. 



And again, in the year 1530: 



Itm in reward the xxvth day of July to Baxter's Svnt of 

 Stannewgh f or bryngyng of ij yong busterds ij d . 



One Dr. Thomas Muffet, of Bulbridge, near 

 Wilton, in Wiltshire, who died in 1590, wrote as 

 follows : 



Bistards, or Bustards (so called for their slow pace and 

 heavy flying), or, as the Scots term them, Gusetards, that 

 is to say, slow geese, feed upon flesh, livers, and young 

 lambs out of sowing time and in harvest time, then they 

 feed upon pure corn. In the summer, towards the ripening 

 of corn, I have seen half a dozen of them lie in a wheat- 

 field fattening themselves (as a deer will doe) with ease and 

 eating. . . . Chuse the youngest and fattest about 

 Allhallowtide (for then they are best) and diet him a day 

 or two . . . then let him bleed to death in the neck 

 veins, and having hung three or four days in a cool place 

 out of the moonshine, either rost or bake it as you do a 

 Turkie, and it will prove both a dainty and wholesome 

 meat. 



