GREAT BUSTARD. 17 



agriculturist has to contend.* The continuous drifting 

 forward of innumerable sharp angular particles, con- 

 sisting almost entirely of comminuted flint, so chafes 

 the tender cuticle of young corn or turnips, that an 

 exposed breck after a few hours' gale, looks as if it had 

 been subjected to a blast of air at an excessive tempera- 

 ture, and in a day or two the vegetation withers away to 

 the destruction of the farmers' hopes. When this has 

 happened remedy he has none, he can look alone to 

 prevention. Accordingly, under the fostering care of 

 the landlords, numerous plantations have, within the 

 last fifty or sixty years, sprung up throughout the whole 

 of this tract, not only entirely changing its aspect but 

 rendering it entirely unsuitable to the wary habits of 

 the bustard, which soon learned to become jealous as 

 any strategist of what might afford an enemy harbour. 

 Prior to the practice of planting becoming general, the 

 bustard was probably as numerous here as any where in 

 England. f Icklingham heath has been for many years 



* My limited space enables me only to quote the title of an 

 interesting paper on this subject in the " Philosophical Transac- 

 tions," to which I would here draw the attention of my readers, 

 being an account of a very remarkable disaster, originating on 

 Lakenheath warren, apparently about the end of the sixteenth or 

 beginning of the seventeenth century, and devastating the land 

 for a distance of five miles till stopped by the river at Downham : 

 " A curious and exact relation of a Sand-floud, which hath lately 

 overwhelmed a great tract of land in the county of Suffolk; 

 together with an account of the check in part given to it; com- 

 municated in an obliging letter to the publisher, by that worthy 

 gentleman Thomas Wright, Esq., living upon the place, and a 

 sufferer by that deluge." Phil. Trans., 1668, vol. iii., pp. 722-725. 



f It is of this particular locality that Yarrell writes ("Brit. Bds.," 

 3rd ed.), " My worthy friend, the late Mr. Frederick J. Nash, of Bishop 

 Stortford, several times told me, that when he was a young man, 

 and then taking the field as a sportsman, he once saw nine flights 

 of bustards in one day, uot far from Thetford, in Norfolk. Some 



D 



