102 Great Bustards. 



they were so taken lias been repeated by author 

 after author, there would appear to be no evidence 

 of its truth. Stevenson tells us that, though " the 

 Swaffham coursing meeting was one of the most 

 celebrated in the whole country, and in the open 

 districts of both counties (Norfolk and Suffolk) 

 the sport of coursing was formerly most extensively 

 followed, greyhounds being very generally kept, 

 yet none of the older inhabitants have ever heard, 

 except from books, that bustards were taken by 

 dogs. If ever the coursing of bustards by grey- 

 hounds were practised in any part of England, 

 it could only have been when the birds were very 

 young, or, being old, had moulted out their quill 

 feathers." Still the statements of the older authors 

 are so explicit that one can only wonder what 

 could have given rise to the fable. The following 

 are a few examples. Drayton, in the " Polyolbion," 

 25th Song, mentions 



The big-boan'd Bustard then, whose body bears that size 

 That he against the wind must run ere he can rise. 



In a " History of Animals," by John Hill, M.D., 

 published in 1752, we find the following explicit 

 statement : " This is a bird more nearly allied to 

 the ostrich and cassowary kind than people are 

 aware, and, like them, it runs at a prodigious rate, 

 and but rarely rises on the wing. . . . We 

 have this bird in many parts of England, where 

 it feeds on vegetables, and on corn when it can get 

 at it. I have seen great numbers of them on the 

 downs in Sussex ; they run away at the approach 



