Great Bustards. 101 



avoided, the eggs were generally taken up by the 

 driver of the hoe/' and " appear often to have 

 been preserved as natural curiosities to lie with 

 grotesquely shaped flints and petrified echini (the 

 ' fairies' loaves ' of the district) on the parlour 

 mantelpiece or bookshelf till they met with the 

 usual fate of such fragile articles." But improve- 

 ment in agriculture was not alone to blame, as we 

 read of a gamekeeper being allowed, " not only to 

 go in quest of them with a swivel-gun mounted on 

 a wheelbarrow screened with boughs, a parchment 

 stalking-horse, and similar devices, but even to 

 construct masked batteries of large duck-guns 

 placed so as to concentrate their fire upon a 

 spot strewed with turnips. The guns forming his 

 batteries had their triggers attached to a cord 

 perhaps half a mile long, and the shepherds and 

 other farm-labourers on the ground were instructed 

 by him to pull the cord whenever they saw the 

 bustards within range." 



On one occasion this man is said to have 

 succeeded in killing no less than seven at one 

 discharge, the birds being presented to the Prince 

 of Wales (George IV.), the Duke of York, and 

 others. And we are sorry to say that the gifts are 

 reported to have " had the effect, in some degree, 

 of procuring the berth of head-gamekeeper at 

 Windsor" for the son of this arch bustard-slayer. 



Every one has probably heard, and most people 

 firmly believe, that bustards were formerly coursed 

 by greyhounds; but, although the statement that 



