GREAT BUSTARD. 15 



once more disappeared, and were not seen again until 

 the frosts and snows of January brought them into the 

 turnip-fields, and displayed them prominently to the 

 observation of the shepherds and other field labourers. 

 Mr. L. Sooby, formerly a tenant of Mr. Hamond's at 

 Gayton, is inclined to connect their appearance on a 

 particular part of his land with the prevalence of a 

 rather common weed, the " Owl's crown " (Filago 

 germanicdy L.), which he said they used to eat ;* but 

 this evidence rests entirely on that gentleman's authority, 

 as does also a statement that in the summer the evening 

 was the time when they usually came forth to feed. In 

 addition to this, he speaks very positively as to the fact 

 that in the last days of the species the surviving hens 

 used to scrape many more nest-holes in the ground than 

 there were birds to occupy them, and on all sides it 

 would appear that, if at that time a cock bird could 

 have been procured from any other country and liberated 

 in this locality, the species would have been preserved at 

 least for a few years longer. 



The precise time at which the extinction of the 

 Norfolk bustard took place, like that of the extinction 

 of many other species, is not, perhaps, now to be deter- 

 mined with accuracy. The year 1838 is the last when 

 examples are known with certainty to have been killed ; 



* The food of this species in a wild state, as in confinement, 

 appears to be somewhat varied, as Naumann specifies many 

 different kinds of plants and other green food, together with 

 beetles, mole-crickets, and grasshoppers. Selby states that, besides 

 its usual diet of grain, seeds, and green corn with turnip- tops in 

 winter, " it also eats worms, and has been known to devour mice 

 and young birds, which are swallowed whole ;" and a still earlier 

 authority, Willughby, writes, " It feeds on corn, seeds of herbs, 

 colewort, dandelion leaves, &c. In the stomach of one dissected, 

 we found a great quantity of hemlock seed, with three or four grains 

 of barley, and that in harvest time." 



